Having relocated to lower Manhattan, the China Institute is
opening its new 50,000-sq. ft. space with an exhibition looking at Chinese
culture and its international influences during the Six Dynasties (220‑589), from
the end of the Han dynasty to the final conquest of South China by the Sui.
“Art in a Time of Chaos: Masterworks from Six Dynasties
China, 3rd – 6th Centuries,” opening September 30, will present more
than 100 artefacts, primarily from the Nanjing Museum and the Shanxi Provincial
Museum.
The Six Dynasties was a time of civil war and foreign
invasion, sometimes compared to the roughly contemporaneous Dark Ages in early
medieval Europe, but it was also an age of great cultural advancement, with calligraphy
and painting emerging as fully matured art forms and the introduction of
Buddhism impacting philosophy and the arts.
“Great chaos led to extraordinary cultural and intellectual achievements by artists who defined the soul of Chinese art for generations with their influence spreading beyond China into Japan and Korea,” notes Willow Weilan Hai, the chief curator of the exhibition.
Highlights of the exhibition including a major relief
mural, “Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove,” discovered during the excavation of a
Southern Dynasty imperial tomb in 1968 and finally pieced together last year by
the curators at the Nanjing museum; a red and green painted frieze from
Northern Shanxi, a very colorful artwork that had been on the sarcophagus of
high government official from the Sui Dynasty; the majestic head of a bodhisattva,
with a crown of flowers from the Northern Qi dynasty (550‑577); and a Persian
silver plate with a hunting scene. There are also numerous fine examples of
calligraphy, sculptures, and ceramics.
