The event, titled "Dunhuang Manuscripts and Paintings: An International Symposium Honoring James and Lucy Lo," honors the Los for 60 years of work to preserve materials and images from Dunhuang, the westernmost Chinese stop on ancient trade routes known collectively as the Silk Road. Dunhuang is home to nearly 500 caves preserving thousands of sculptures and wall paintings, from the fourth to 13th century, and more than 40,000 manuscripts. About 80 medieval manuscripts acquired by the Los are part of the Princeton University Library collection.

One of the symposium participants, Huaiyu Chen, assistant professor of religious studies at the University of the West, studied the Princeton collection and is publishing a scholarly catalog of it. The other participants are Jacob Dalton, assistant professor of religious studies at Yale University; Jean-Pierre Drege, professor of Chinese history and philology at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris; Fan Jinshi, director of the Dunhuang Research Academy; and Susan Whitfield, director of the International Dunhuang Project.

The symposium is sponsored by the Buddhist Studies Workshop and the Tang Center for East Asian Art. Additional support was provided by the University Library, Program in East Asian Studies, Council of the Humanities, Department of Religion, Yale University Council on East Asian Studies, American Trust for the British Library, ARTstor and Mercer Trust.

The event is open to the public, but registration is required. To register, visit tang.princeton.edu/dh/dunhuang-home.html.