The Pleasures of Chinese Gardens

Phillip E. Bloom, June and Simon K.C. Li Curator of the Chinese Garden and Director of the Center for East Asian Garden Studies, examines a selection of gardens from Song-dynasty (960–1279) China that explicitly thematized both the sensual and intellectual pleasures of gardening. The talk argues that close attention to the pleasures afforded by Chinese gardens enables us to reconcile their myriad, often contradictory, functions.