Grand View: Northern Sung Dynasty Painting, Calligraphy, Ju Ware and Sung Dynasty Rare Books
Galleries: Main Building, first and second floors
Dates: 2006.12.25~2007.03.25
The National Palace Museum collection of Northern Sung treasures is renowned throughout the world for its quantity and quality. Therefore, as a preview celebration for the full re-opening of the Museum's Main Building, this once-in-a-lifetime special exhibition covering Sung rare books as well as painting, calligraphy, and Ju ware porcelains is being presented.
Historians have deemed the Northern Sung (960-1127), although usually regarded as less powerful than the previous Han or T'ang dynasties, as a critical juncture in China's cultural evolution and as a peak in the development of the arts. In terms of painting and calligraphy, the treasures of the Northern Sung in the NPM collection on display in this special exhibit include Fan K'uan's "Travelers Among Mountains and Streams", Kuo Hsi's "Early Spring", Li T'ang's "Windy Pines Among a Myriad Valleys", Su Shih's "The Cold Food Observance", and Huang T'ing-chien's "Seven-character Verse (Scent of Flowers Wafting)". Important loans from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City that add considerably to the display include such masterpieces as Tung Yüan's "Riverbank" and Ch'iao Chung-ch'ang's "Illustration to the Second Prose Poem on the Red Cliff", respectively.
Porcelains of the Northern Sung known as Ju ware, with their lustrous sky-blue glaze, are amongst the most precious ceramics ever produced in the history of China, and only about seventy pieces survive today. All 21 pieces of Ju ware held by the NPM will be on display along with loans of other Ju wares from the Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art at the University of London (England) that originally were part of the former Ch'ing dynasty court collection, related Korean celadons from The Museum of Oriental Ceramics in Osaka (Japan), and pieces excavated from the Ju kiln site now in the Henan Provincial Administration of Cultural Heritage (mainland China). Brought all together, this display reinforces the premier status and influence of Ju wares in the history of Chinese ceramics.
Also on exhibit are rare books from the Sung dynasty (960-1279) from the NPM collection. Despite their age, the exquisite paper and ink as well as the refined woodblock cutting and editing make these editions renowned throughout the world and treasured by book collectors as masterpieces. Of the nearly 200 Sung rare books in the NPM collection, some are also distinguished as being sole surviving copies. About thirty have been specially selected for this exhibition to provide audiences with a glimpse into the precious and rarified world of Sung dynasty books.