He earned a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. His book Ordinary Images (2002), a study of Chinese Buddhist and Daoist images from the second to the sixth centuries, was the recipient of the 2004 Shimada Prize for distinguished scholarship in the history of East Asian art. One of his most recent publication is "Locating World Art" in The Migrant's Time: Rethinking Art History and Diaspora (Clark Institute, 2011), edited by Saloni Mathur. He is editor of Archives of Asian Art.