Biography.guide
Home › People › Art historian › Yang Xin
Portrait of Yang Xin

Yang Xin

1940 – 2020

Chinese art historian

Don't just read it — keep itBiographies to ownE-book · Audio · Video From $7 →

About Yang Xin

Lived 1940 – 2020 (aged 79–80). Yang Xin was a Chinese art historian and sinologist.

Yang Xin (; 1940 – 31 January 2020) was a Chinese art historian and curator who served as Vice Director of the Palace Museum in Beijing from 1987 to 2000. He edited the 60-volume The Palace Museum's Essential Collections as well as its 10-volume English edition (Commercial Press, 2015), and co-authored Three Thousand Years of Chinese Painting (Yale University Press, 2002).

Biography Yang was born in 1940 in Xiangyin County, Hunan, Republic of China. After graduating from the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts High School in 1960, he entered the first class of the Art History Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, where he studied under the renowned scholars and Qigong.

He began working at the Palace Museum in Beijing in 1965. After the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution, Yang became a researcher and served as the main assistant and disciple of Xu Bangda in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1984, he spent a year as a Henry Luce Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley in the United States. In the decade around 2000, he edited the monumental 60-volume series The Palace Museum's Essential Collections . He subsequently oversaw the publication of the English edition of the series, which was published in 10 volumes in 2015 by the Commercial Press of Hong Kong.

Yang died on 31 January 2020.

Biography shop

Don’t just read it —
keep it.

Full-length biographies made to live with: read them, listen on the way to work, watch them tonight.

  • E-book
  • Audio
  • Video
Browse the shop — from $7

Instant download · yours to keep · every purchase keeps this site free

Important facts

Born
1940
Birth century
Education
Central Academy of Fine Arts

People in Yang Xin's life

Named in this biography and alive at the same time

Contemporaries

People whose lives overlapped Yang Xin's

Frequently asked questions

Who was Yang Xin?

Chinese art historian

When was Yang Xin born?

Yang Xin was born in 1940.

When did Yang Xin die?

Yang Xin died on 31 January 2020.

What was Yang Xin's occupation?

Yang Xin was an art historian and sinologist.

What nationality was Yang Xin?

Yang Xin was Chinese.

Sources & further reading

· Wikipedia: Yang Xin

· Wikidata: Q84306919

· DBpedia: Yang Xin (art historian)

Cite this page

APA: Biography.guide. (2026). Yang Xin. https://biography.guide/yang-xin-art-historian/

MLA: "Yang Xin." Biography.guide, https://biography.guide/yang-xin-art-historian/.

Chicago: "Yang Xin." Biography.guide. https://biography.guide/yang-xin-art-historian/.

Data last updated: 2026-09-20 · Spot an error? Report a correction.

Page generated 2026-09-27 05:17 UTC