CATEGORY
Images
ACCESS
open access
URL
https://chineseiconography.org
DESCRIPTION
The Chinese Iconography Thesaurus (CIT / 中國圖像誌索引典) is designed as both an indexing standard and image archive for Chinese iconography. Currently, it contains over 11,000 concepts extracted primarily from pre-1900 sources (including historical catalogue records like Shiqu baoji 石渠寶笈 and Midian zhulin 秘殿珠林) and approximately 6,000 images from five major collections: V&A Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Palace Museum (Taipei), Cleveland Museum of Art, and Harvard-Yenching Library. The CIT addresses the long-standing problem of cataloguing Chinese art using Eurocentric classifications by providing controlled vocabulary rooted in Chinese cultural specificity.
SOURCE LIST
ACLS Open Database Resource Guide
TAGS
LAST MODIFIED
2026-01-16