Jessica Harrison-Hall


Jessica Lucy Kilgour Harrison-Hall Fellow of the [Society of Antiquaries of London|FSA] is a British art historian, sinologist, curator and author. She is currently Head of the China section, Curator of Chinese Ceramics and Decorative Arts at the British Museum and is also Curator of the Sir Percival David Collection at the British Museum. She researches, lectures and writes about Chinese history and its global connections through visual and material culture.

Biography

Harrison-Hall has an MA in Chinese and fine art from Edinburgh University. She completed a PhD from the University of East Anglia in 2025.
In 1991, Harrison-Hall joined the British Museum as a project curator for Jessica Rawson in the Department of Oriental Antiquities. She became Curator of Chinese Ceramics in 1994, curator of the Sir Percival David Collection in 2006, and Head of the China Section in 2015. She was President of the Oriental Ceramics Society from 2015 to 2018. She is the recipient of two major Arts and Humanities Research Council awards: "Ming Courts and Contacts 1400-1450" project and "Cultural Creativity in Qing China 1796-1912" .
She is married to the writer and filmmaker Martin Keady with whom she has three children.

Exhibitions and galleries

  • 2023 - "China's Hidden Century, 1796-1912" at the British Museum
  • 2017 - The Sir Joseph Hotung Gallery of China and South Asia
  • 1994 - "Ancient Chinese Trade Ceramics" staged at the National History Museum in Taipei.
  • 2014 - "Ming: Fifty Years that Changed China"
  • 2009-2012 - "China: Journey to the East" - a travelling exhibition, working with seven UK museums
  • 2000 - "Vietnam: Behind the Lines: Images of War 1965-75" - the first exhibition in the West to examine Northern Vietnamese artists work from the American-Vietnam war.

Awards and honours

  • 2017 Book Prize Specialist Publication Accolade - Awarded by the International Convention of Asia Scholars for Ming China: Courts and Contacts 1400-1450, jointly edited with Craig Clunas, Jessica Harrison-Hall and Yu-ping Luk. The book was described by the judges as 'An outstanding connective history in pursuit of China's historical difference’

Selected publications

  • China's 1800s: Material and Visual Culture ISBN 978-0861592418
  • China's Hidden Century: 1796-1912 ISBN 978-0714124933
  • Creators of Modern China: 100 Lives from Empire to Republic 1796–1912 ISBN 978-0500480809
  • China: A History in Objects, Thames and Hudson, London, 2017.. Italian and Portuguese translations ; Chinese, Chinese, Korean translations
  • Ming China: Courts and Contacts 1400-1450
  • Ming: 50 years that changed China, British Museum Publications, London, 2014
  • Ming: Art, People and Places, British Museum Publications, London, 2014.
  • Passion for Porcelain: Masterpieces of Ceramics from the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum,, National Museum of China, Beijing, Lu Zhangshen
  • Chinese Ceramics: Highlights of the Sir Percival David Collection,, London, 2009
  • Vietnam: Behind the Lines - Images from the War 1965-75, British Museum Publications, London, 2002..
  • Ming Ceramics - A Catalogue of the late Yuan and Ming Ceramics in the British Museum, British Museum Publications, London, 2001.. Translated as Catalogue of Ming Ceramics in the British Museum. Volumes 1 and 2 / 大英博物館藏中國明代陶瓷, Beijing 2014