James C.Y. Watt

James Watt was educated at the universities of Oxford and Hong Kong. He has taught at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he was also Director of the University Art Museum (1971–80). He was Curator of Asiatic Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (1981–85) and has since been with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he is at present Brooke Russell Astor Chairman of the Department of Asian Art.

As a museum curator, James Watt has worked on practically every area of Chinese art. In the past twenty years he has been particularly interested in the cultural and artistic exchanges between China and Central Asia, as demonstrated in the catalogues of the exhibitions When Silk Was Gold (with Anne Wardwell, 1997), China: Dawn of a Golden Age (2004), and The World of Khubilai Khan: Chinese Art in the Yuan Dynasty (2010).