Y. L. Lucy Wang

Y. L. Lucy Wang (MA, MPhil, ABD) specializes in modern architecture. In her writing, teaching, and curating, she focuses on Asia’s empires from maritime exchange to postcolony, with a particular interest in land administration and scientific knowledge. Her dissertation traces the emergence of professionalized architecture in the Greater China region (c. 1894 – 1949), examining how a hygienic consciousness entered into architectural expertise and how architects, doctors, land-surveyors, and engineers integrated new understandings of disease into their work. 

Lucy was part of the curatorial team of The Project of Independence: Architectures of Decolonization in South Asia, 1947 – 1985 in her role as MoMA’s 2021 – 2022 Mellon-Marron Research Consortium Fellow in the Department of Architecture and Design. She held various pedagogical leadership positions at the Columbia Center for Teaching and Learning (2019 – 2022) and coordinated programming for the Collins/Kaufmann Forum for Modern Architectural History (2017 – 2019). Her research has been supported by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine, Dumbarton Oaks, the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, the Dr. Lee MacCormick Edwards Charitable Foundation, and the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD). She received a bachelor’s degree in art history and journalism (summa cum laude, departmental honors) from Northwestern University and worked in digital communications at Architizer and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Publications

“Zhang 瘴, Shu 暑, and the Traveling Embassy: Avoiding Heat at the Mountain Resort of Emperor Qianlong.” Thresholds 51 (May 1, 2023): 14 – 25.

“‘Masters in Our Own House’: Architecture in the Visual Culture of the Bandung Conference, 1955.” Post: Notes on Art in a Global Context, June 8, 2022.

“From Garrisoned District to Chinese Town: Land and Boundaries at the Kowloon Walled City, 1898-1912.” Architectural Histories 10, no. 1 (May 4, 2022): 1 – 24.