Nearly 1200 years ago, an Arab ship bearing a precious cargo of ceramics, gold, silver set sail from the port of Canton. Just off the shores of Sumatra, near the island of Belitung, the ship sank, and remained untouched until discovered by chance in 1998. In April 2015, it was announced that the Asian Civilisations […]
There have been few exhibitions this year because many museums around the world were closed due to the pandemic. The good news is that some of them have re-opened and we will see a few major exhibitions in the coming months. The latest addition is centered on the life of Su Shi, also known by […]
A new exhibition featuring the Ming dynasty painter Qiu Ying (ca. 1494–ca. 1552) just opened today at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Few artists in Chinese history have proven as enigmatic as Qiu Ying, whose life and art reveal a series of paradoxes. Though one of the most famous artists of the […]
The year 2019 marks the seventieth anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. To celebrate this special occasion, the Tsinghua University Art Museum is hosting the special exhibition “Everlasting like the Heavens—The Cultures and Arts of the Zhou, Qin, Han, and Tang.” The exhibition theme was drawn from a classical Han-dynasty auspicious […]
Recently a blue-and-white porcelain plate came into our attention. We believe that this plate is from the 9th century, or the late Tang dynasty imperial court, which makes it one of the earliest surviving pieces of blue-and-white porcelain ever produced. Measuring approximately 49 cm in diameter and 7.6 cm in height, it is also the […]
This special exhibition at the Tokyo National Museum includes recent discoveries regarding China’s tumultuous transition from the Han dynasty (206–220) to the Three Kingdoms period (220–280). The Han dynasty’s decline at the end of the second century ignited a prolonged power struggle between unrelenting military leaders. The country was split into three kingdoms called Wei, […]
In what is certainly a first, the National Palace Museum (NPM) in Taipei presents in its main galleries a special exhibition for children entitled “The NPM Zoo: Animal Paintings in the Museum Collection.” From July 5 to September 25, children can come to the NPM and see paintings on all kinds of animals, ranging from […]
Today is the sixtieth anniversary of the premiere of the Butterfly Lovers’ Violin Concerto. The concerto is an orchestral adaptation of an ancient Chinese legend, The Butterfly Lovers, or Liang Zhu (梁祝) in Chinese, named after the protagonists Liang Shaobo and Zhu Yingtai. Written for the western style orchestra, it features a solo violin played […]
Zhang Daqian (1899–1983) was a native of Neijiang in Sichuan and had the personal name Yuan. He also went by the style name Jiyuan and was known as Daqian (Dai-chien) Jushi, the name of his studio being Dafeng Hall (Hall of Big Wind). As a child he began to learn painting from his mother Zeng […]
The Lantern Festival is a Chinese festival celebrated on the fifteenth day of the first month in the lunar calendar. It marks the final day of the traditional Chinese New Year celebrations. During the Lantern Festival, children go out at night carrying paper lanterns and solve riddles on the lanterns. This year, the Lantern Festival falls […]
