The Daoist Iconography Project 道教圖像學計畫 (DIP) is an international research database created for the study of visual representations of the Daoist pantheon and their contexts of use in Daoist ritual traditions, illustrated scriptures, and popular culture. A unique enterprise bringing together the expertise of scholars in a variety of disciplines in both Asia and the West, the Project's goal is to provide a new means for advancing our understanding of the rich visual culture of this native religion of China, as well as an invaluable resource for academics, museum and art specialists, educators, and students.
Under the direction of Poul Andersen, Associate Professor of Chinese Religions at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, DIP was initiated in the fall of 2005 as a joint venture with the Honolulu Museum of Art and its Director Steven Little. From the outset, this initiative aimed to capture the diversity of Daoist images in their contexts of use in historical works, art works, and Daoist ritual practices. This work was made possible with the support of a grant from the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation.
We invite the public to tour a sampling of the variety of Daoist images from our database collections and our work towards a greater understanding and appreciation of their iconographic meaning and significance in Daoist religion and practice through the ages.
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Daoism and Its Religious Iconography Among the world's major religions, Daoism is without question the least fully explored by scholars, and the least clearly understood by people in general. Within the field of comparative religion it is still quite common to find textbooks that in effect avoid taking Daoism into account, and that describe the universally shared phenomena of religion and its visual expressions with reference to all the major world religions—except for Daoism. While it represents one of the richest religious traditions of the world, Daoism is still very much a terra incognita to the world outside the inner circles of its priesthood, and even some of the most basic questions concerning its history and its practices, not to mention the central elements of its pantheon, still wait to be answered. The goal of DIP has been to devise the means that will lead to finding the answers to some of the most important of these questions. Through compiling and analyzing images of the deities of the Daoist pantheon, the project aims to reveal the grammar and vocabulary of the iconic language of Daoist images and therewith the meanings expressed through this form of religious art.
Poul Andersen, Director
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