Uploaded May 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
This event occurred on May 7, 2026.
Of Color and Ink is a documentary about the remarkable journey of artist Chang Dai-chien (1899–1983), China’s foremost painter of the 20th century. Director Weimin Zhang documents her 12-year journey to unravel the mysteries and controversies surrounding Chang’s decades of exile in South America, Europe, and the United States. In the 1940s, Chang spent a formative period in Dunhuang, studying and copying the ancient Mogao Cave murals— the subject of a 2016 Getty Research Institute exhibition—which inspired renewed public interest in the murals and refined Chang’s techniques. Of Color and Ink offers an illuminating, revelatory, and entertaining exploration of one of the most influential giants of 20th-century art.
A screening of the film at the Getty Center was followed by a conversation with director and producer Weimin Zhang, writer Carl Nagin, director of the Chang Dai-chien Research Center Yudan Zhang, and USC professor Meiling Cheng.
This program is part of the Art on Screen series, which celebrates moving-image media and its intersection with art and art histories.
https://www.getty.edu/whats-on/art-on-screen/
Weimin Zhang is an award-winning filmmaker, and a prominent member of China’s Sixth Generation of filmmakers. She is a graduate of the Beijing Film Academy and Ohio University’s film school. Over the course of her career, she has worked on numerous acclaimed films in both China and the United States as a director and cinematographer. Among her many achievements is The House of Spirit, which received the Women in Film Award and was screened at more than a dozen film festivals. The Library of Congress acquired her interactive multimedia project, Nüshu: The Women’s Secret Writing, for its permanent collection.
Award-winning author Carl Nagin has worked as an editor, teacher, and independent journalist in print and documentaries for four decades. He is currently completing Forger, Painter, Legend Maker: The Art and Life of Chang Dai-chien. He is a three-time recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities for his research and film work on Chang. His articles have appeared in The New Yorker, Art & Antiques, Orientations, China Times and House & Garden. He wrote and reported for the PBS series FRONTLINE, the BBC, and ABC News. Along with Zhang Weimin’s Of Color and Ink, he produced Abode of Illusion: The Art and Life of Chang Dai-chien. For the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, he edited the award-winning catalogue, Tales from the Land of Dragons: 1000 Years of Chinese Painting as well as Masterpieces of Chinese Painting: Tang, Sung, and Yuan Dynasties.
Yudan Zhang is currently director of the office at Sichuan Museum and a doctoral candidate in the Department of Philosophy at Sichuan University. She serves as executive director of the Zhang Daqian International Art Research Center. As a research curator, she is also deputy director of the Silk Road Special Committee at the China Museum Association, and an off-campus joint supervisor for master’s students at Chengdu University. She specializes in the study of Chinese painting and calligraphy, and has co-authored multiple works, published numerous papers in core journals such as WenXian, undertaken or participated in various research projects, and curated exhibitions including Exhibition of Zhang Daqian’s Dunhuang Investigation Artifacts from the Sichuan Museum Collection.
Born and raised in Taipei, Taiwan, Meiling Cheng came to the United States for graduate studies at Yale School of Drama, from which she received her MFA and DFA degrees. Dr. Cheng is currently professor of Dramatic Arts in Critical Studies at the USC School of Dramatic Arts, with a joint appointment at the USC Roski School of Art and Design. She is the author of In Other Los Angeleses: Multicentric Performance Art (2002) and Beijing Xingwei: Contemporary Chinese Time-Based Art (2013), for which she received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Zumberge Research Award, and a USC Phi Kappa Phi Faculty Recognition Award. She coedited, with Gabrielle Cody, the critical anthology Reading Contemporary Performance: Theatricality Across Genres (2016).
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The Getty Research Institute is dedicated to furthering knowledge and advancing understanding of the visual arts and their various histories through its expertise, active collecting program, public programs, institutional collaborations, exhibitions, publications, digital services, and residential scholars programs. Its library and special collections of rare materials and digital resources serve an international community of scholars and the interested public. The Research Institute's activities and scholarly resources guide and sustain each other and together provide a unique environment for research, critical inquiry, and scholarly exchange.
Getty Research Institute: https://www.getty.edu/research/
This event occurred on May 7, 2026.
Of Color and Ink is a documentary about the remarkable journey of artist Chang Dai-chien (1899–1983), China’s foremost painter of the 20th century. Director Weimin Zhang documents her 12-year journey to unravel the mysteries and controversies surrounding Chang’s decades of exile in South America, Europe, and the United States. In the 1940s, Chang spent a formative period in Dunhuang, studying and copying the ancient Mogao Cave murals— the subject of a 2016 Getty Research Institute exhibition—which inspired renewed public interest in the murals and refined Chang’s techniques. Of Color and Ink offers an illuminating, revelatory, and entertaining exploration of one of the most influential giants of 20th-century art.
A screening of the film at the Getty Center was followed by a conversation with director and producer Weimin Zhang, writer Carl Nagin, director of the Chang Dai-chien Research Center Yudan Zhang, and USC professor Meiling Cheng.
This program is part of the Art on Screen series, which celebrates moving-image media and its intersection with art and art histories.
https://www.getty.edu/whats-on/art-on-screen/
Weimin Zhang is an award-winning filmmaker, and a prominent member of China’s Sixth Generation of filmmakers. She is a graduate of the Beijing Film Academy and Ohio University’s film school. Over the course of her career, she has worked on numerous acclaimed films in both China and the United States as a director and cinematographer. Among her many achievements is The House of Spirit, which received the Women in Film Award and was screened at more than a dozen film festivals. The Library of Congress acquired her interactive multimedia project, Nüshu: The Women’s Secret Writing, for its permanent collection.
Award-winning author Carl Nagin has worked as an editor, teacher, and independent journalist in print and documentaries for four decades. He is currently completing Forger, Painter, Legend Maker: The Art and Life of Chang Dai-chien. He is a three-time recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities for his research and film work on Chang. His articles have appeared in The New Yorker, Art & Antiques, Orientations, China Times and House & Garden. He wrote and reported for the PBS series FRONTLINE, the BBC, and ABC News. Along with Zhang Weimin’s Of Color and Ink, he produced Abode of Illusion: The Art and Life of Chang Dai-chien. For the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, he edited the award-winning catalogue, Tales from the Land of Dragons: 1000 Years of Chinese Painting as well as Masterpieces of Chinese Painting: Tang, Sung, and Yuan Dynasties.
Yudan Zhang is currently director of the office at Sichuan Museum and a doctoral candidate in the Department of Philosophy at Sichuan University. She serves as executive director of the Zhang Daqian International Art Research Center. As a research curator, she is also deputy director of the Silk Road Special Committee at the China Museum Association, and an off-campus joint supervisor for master’s students at Chengdu University. She specializes in the study of Chinese painting and calligraphy, and has co-authored multiple works, published numerous papers in core journals such as WenXian, undertaken or participated in various research projects, and curated exhibitions including Exhibition of Zhang Daqian’s Dunhuang Investigation Artifacts from the Sichuan Museum Collection.
Born and raised in Taipei, Taiwan, Meiling Cheng came to the United States for graduate studies at Yale School of Drama, from which she received her MFA and DFA degrees. Dr. Cheng is currently professor of Dramatic Arts in Critical Studies at the USC School of Dramatic Arts, with a joint appointment at the USC Roski School of Art and Design. She is the author of In Other Los Angeleses: Multicentric Performance Art (2002) and Beijing Xingwei: Contemporary Chinese Time-Based Art (2013), for which she received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Zumberge Research Award, and a USC Phi Kappa Phi Faculty Recognition Award. She coedited, with Gabrielle Cody, the critical anthology Reading Contemporary Performance: Theatricality Across Genres (2016).
______________________________________________________________________
The Getty Research Institute is dedicated to furthering knowledge and advancing understanding of the visual arts and their various histories through its expertise, active collecting program, public programs, institutional collaborations, exhibitions, publications, digital services, and residential scholars programs. Its library and special collections of rare materials and digital resources serve an international community of scholars and the interested public. The Research Institute's activities and scholarly resources guide and sustain each other and together provide a unique environment for research, critical inquiry, and scholarly exchange.
Getty Research Institute: https://www.getty.edu/research/
