MOCA TALKS with Dr. Richard A. Pegg – Heaven & Earth: The Blue Maps of China
September 5, 2025, 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm
The Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) cordially invites you to a captivating conversation featuring Dr. Richard A. Pegg, Director and Curator of Asian Art at the MacLean Collection. Dr. Pegg, curator of MOCA’s current special exhibition Heaven & Earth: The Blue Maps of China (on view through March 29, 2026), will engage in an insightful discussion with Herb Tam, MOCA’s Chief Curator & Senior Director of Exhibitions and Programming.
During the first decades of the 19th century, China was in a moment of transition, grappling with its geopolitical status as both an ancient and modern nation-state. It was in this moment that two series of large-format maps, one terrestrial and one celestial, were printed in the city of Suzhou. These maps captured Chinese ideas about the relationship between terrestrial and celestial space, and provide insight today into how Chinese scholars and artists conceptualized the world around them.
Join us to explore the artistic, historical, and cultural significance of these blue maps, considering their place in the broader global history of mapmaking.
Learn More About Heaven & Earth
About Dr. Richard A. Pegg
Dr. Richard A. Pegg is currently Director and Curator of Asian Art for the MacLean Collection, an Asian art museum and separate map library located north of Chicago, Illinois. He has written and lectured widely on the visual, literary, cartographic, and martial arts traditions of East Asia. He is the author and co-author of The Maclean Collection: Chinese Ritual Bronzes (2010), Cartographic Traditions in East Asian Maps (2014), Highlights of Asian Art: The Maclean Collection (E-book, 2015), Chinese Swords: An Ancient Tradition and Modern Training (2015), The Chinese Jar (a novel, 2015), The MacLean Collection: Early to Medieval Chinese Pottery (2023), The Blue Maps of China: Heaven and Earth in the Early Nineteenth Century, (forthcoming).
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