Shelagh Vainker holds joint appointments with the Ashmolean Museum as Alice King Curator of Chinese Art ( 75%) and the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies where she is Associate Professor of Chinese Art (25%). She is a Fellow of St Hugh's College.
She was previously Curator of Chinese Ceramics and Textiles at The British Museum.
Shelagh has published widely on Chinese art including books on ceramics and silk, articles on many aspects of the material culture of the Northern Song dynasty (960–1127) and a series of collection and exhibition catalogues on modern Chinese painting.
She is responsible for three galleries in the Ashmolean: the permanent galleries China 3000BC – AD800 and China From AD800, and the Khoan and Michael Sullivan Gallery for Chinese Painting which shows two paintings exhibitions each year. She is literary executor of the estate of Professor Michael Sullivan.
Exhibitions curated:
National Gallery of Art, Beijing
苏立文与20 世纪中国美术 Michael Sullivan and Twentieth-Century Chinese Art (2012)
Ashmolean Museum
Cheung Yee and his 1960s contemporaries (2024)
Fang Lijun – Portraits and Porcelain (2023)
Art in China, 1949-1999 (2022)
Wu Guanzhong (in conjunction with Hong Kong Museum of Art) (2022)
Cai Guo-Qiang – Gunpowder Art (2019)
Liu Dan – New Ink and Old Masters (2016)
Fang Zhaoling (2014)
Landscape/Landscript: Nature as Language in the Art of Xu Bing (2013)
Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sullivan Collection (2012-13)
Cultural Revolution: State Graphics in China in the 1960s and 1970s: Part One (2011)
Cultural Revolution: State Graphics in China in the 1960s and 1970s: Part Two (2012)
The Past in the Present: Script and Archaism in Modern Chinese Art (2010
Everyone’s Life is an Epic: New Work by Qu Leilei (2005)
Pu Quan (1913-1991) and his Generation: Imperial Painters in Twentieth-century China (2004)
Fu Baoshi (1904-1965) and his Contemporaries (2004)
Jingdezhen Porcelain (2004)
Chinese Silk (2004)
The Reyes Collection of Modern Chinese Paintings (2003)
The Khoan and Michael Sullivan Collection: Part Two (2002)
The Khoan and Michael Sullivan Collection: Part One (2001)
Modern Chinese Figure Painting (2001)
Khoan and Michael Sullivan Gallery of Chinese Paintings : Inaugural exhibition (2000)
Chinese Silks (1999)Paintings by Chen Ch’i-Kwan (1999)
Chinese Calligraphy (1998)
Paintings by Pan Tianshou (1997)
Modern Chinese Paintings from the Reyes Collection (1996)
Chinese Landscape Painting (1996)
Modern Chinese Prints: Liu Haiming (1995)
Later Chinese Blue and White Ceramics (1995)
Chinese Fan Paintings (1994)
Chinese Paintings from a Private Collection (1993)
Modern Chinese Paintings: Lo Ch’ing (1993)
Korea AD 500 - 20th century (1992)
Chinese Blue and White Textiles: domestic embroidery from Sichuan (1992)
Shelagh's main research interest is the material culture of the Northern Song (960-1127 CE) dynasty. She also writes on modern and contemporary Chinese art.