Petra ten-Doesschate Chu is a professor of art history and museum studies and director of graduate studies in Museum Professions at Seton Hall University. Ning Ding is a professor of art history and theory and vice-dean at the School of Arts, Peking University.

"If modernity can be considered in terms of intensified transcultural exchanges, the volume helps to reset its origins for China and the West to at least one hundred years before the accustomed chronology. . . . Overcoming the traditional bias towards the "fine arts" in art-historical writing, volume moves easily between painting, print, architecture, textiles, interior decoration and technical instruments."--Burlington Magazine "Beautifully illustrated. . . . [This volume] offers a serious treatment of . . . a complex problem through the diversity of the methodologies and perspectives adopted by its contributors."--New Perspectives on the Eighteenth Century