# Department of Art History

**Source**: https://arthistory.uchicago.edu/cao
**Parent**: https://arthistory.uchicago.edu/about/staff

## Mengge Cao

Mengge Cao

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[menggec@uchicago.edu](mailto:menggec@uchicago.edu)

### Biography

Mengge Cao is a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Center for the Art of East Asia (CAEA) in conjunction with the Department of Art History. His research examines the development of painting formats in Middle Period China (750–1350), with a special focus on the relationship between painting’s objecthood, perceiving bodies, and the built environment. He is also interested in exploring the agency of reprographic technologies in East Asian art history. At CAEA, Mengge is responsible for providing research content, developing the curatorial narrative, and writing labels for the exhibition related to the Dispersed Chinese Art Digitization Project (DCADP).

Mengge received his PhD from the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University. In his dissertation “Small-Size Painting and its Viewership in Southern Song Dynasty China, 1127–1279,” Mengge conducts quantitative analyses of nearly 1,500 entries from the “[Song Dynasty Painting Database](https://github.com/caomengge/Song-Dynasty-Paintings-Database )” and argues that small-size paintings gained medium specificities at the turn of the late twelfth century and facilitated interpersonal communication among emperors, imperial families, and courtiers in the Inner Court.

Mengge also co-founded “[Museumverse](https://museumverse.princeton.edu/ ),” a startup that explores the potential of 3D scanning and mixed reality technologies to facilitate the digital transformation of art history pedagogy, research, and curatorial practices.

## Publications

"Immersion and Absorption: Painting Sizes and Visual Experiences in Middle-Period China.” *Archives of Asian Art*75.1 (2025): 1-28.  <https://doi.org/10.1215/00666637-11696792>

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