The palace gates slowly opened, and the world underwent profound change. On October 10, 1925, the Forbidden City—long a Ming and Qing imperial compound, its gates towering and closed to the public for centuries—turned toward the people and became an open museum space. Thus was the Palace Museum born. From the establishment of the Antiquities […]
The National Palace Museum is home to treasured collections of artifacts. To a greater extent, it is a depository of collective memories spanning millenniums. In 2025, the Museum is celebrating a significant milestone: the centennial of a transformative journey from an imperial collection to a museum for all since its inception in 1925, the 75th […]
Only two weeks remain for this special exhibition of Qi Baishi at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. Reaching new heights with both its influential style and its staggering auction prices, the work of Qi Baishi (1864–1957) remains an inspiration to audiences worldwide. Blending expertly minimal brushwork with passages of abstraction, Qi changed the […]
This new exhibition opens today at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. Based on recent archaeological discoveries, Phoenix Kingdoms reveals the previously unknown splendor, sophistication, and extravagance of two kingdoms that flourished at the end of China’s Bronze Age. Conquered by the First Emperor in a brutal country-wide unification, the Zeng and Chu states […]
China’s Southern Paradise: Treasures from the Lower Yangzi Delta has recently concluded at the Cleveland Museum of Art. It is the first exhibition in the West that focuses on the artistic production and cultural impact of a region located in the coastal area south of the Yangzi River. Called Jiangnan (江南, “River South”), this region […]
Happy New Year! Only two weeks remain for this special exhibition of Chinese flower-and-bird painting at Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA). Showcasing masterpieces spanning 500 years from Tianjin Museum and Changzhou Museum, this exhibition marks the first showing of works traveling from China to the U.S. since the onset of the pandemic. The exhibition […]
This one-month exhibition just concluded three days ago at the Nezu Museum in Tokyo, but it is worth a revisit. The Song period (960–1279) was a pinnacle in the history of Chinese painting and calligraphy, and works from that period were regarded as classics by later generations. Starting in Japan’s medieval period (1185–1573), Japanese connoisseurs […]
The Heart of Zen features two extraordinary ink paintings, Persimmons (popularly known as Six Persimmons) and Chestnuts, on view in the United States for the first time. Attributed to the 13th-century monk Muxi (Muqi), these exquisitely subtle compositions were painted in China and then crossed the ocean to Japan, where they have been designated Important […]
Ren Bonian (任伯年, 1840–1895) was a pioneer in the history of modern Chinese painting. He was a representative figure of the early stage of the Shanghai School, characterized by the combination of meticulous techniques and sketching ideas in both flower-and-bird painting and figure painting. He took inspirations from Chen Hongshou, Zhu Da, Yun Shouping, Chen […]
This one-month special exhibition on Chinese calligraphy just concluded a week ago at Zhejiang Art Museum in Hangzhou. It showcased many rubbings and handwritings of calligraphy from masters since the Song dynasty. Chinese calligraphy has always used “intention” as the aesthetic standard, requiring calligraphy creation to have “true intention” and express the emotion and interest […]
