Metropolitan Museum Asian Art Collection

In “CHINA: WEST MEETS EAST AT THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART,” museum director Philippe de Montebello, along with curators from The Met’s Asian Art Department, helps viewers access a culture that has had a 5000-year head start by showcasing Chinese artistic accomplishments spanning 50 centuries.

As the Great Wall attests, China has not always welcomed outside influences, but Chinese culture has always been shaped by them. The show begins with the story of Chinese export porcelain, which in a way is the story of China’s relationship with the world. As early as 1000 AD, Chinese porcelain exhibited foreign decorative motifs and by the 14th century, when Kublai Khan and the Mongol invaders were ruling China, exporting porcelain was big business. In the 18th and 19th centuries, so much “Chinaware” was exported to the U.S. and Europe, that Chinese porcelain became synonymous with Chinese art.

As the program progresses, we see masterworks from the Neolithic or Stone Age, the Great Bronze Age, and the Han, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties—everything from lavish examples of Chinese decorative arts in jade, carved lacquer, marble, gold, silver and rhinoceros horn to monumental Buddhist cave sculptures carved out of the living rock as acts of piety.

Going behind the scenes into The Met’s Asian Conservation Studio, we see fragile paintings and calligraphies on silk, satin and paper being painstakingly restored. Some are more than a thousand years old. In this special room, no shoes are allowed. Neither is the public. Here, Mike Hearn, the Douglas Dillon Curator of Chinese Painting, takes us through the anatomy of a Chinese painting, explaining that the Chinese painted on scrolls, not canvases, and that these works were meant to be unrolled, appreciated and then put away until the next viewing. Like an early form of blogging, viewers were invited to pen their comments and impressions directly on the painting.

At the heart of The Met’s Chinese Art Collection is a Chinese Scholars’ Garden–the Astor Court—modeled on a 17th century Ming dynasty garden court in Southern China. It reveals one of the principals of Chinese architecture – a garden that is open, but enclosed. Passing through the circular “Moon Gate,” visitors enter another world and become instantly meditative, transfixed by the trickling water and the irregular rock formations. Once inside the court, natural rock thresholds mark a further divide between manmade architecture and the realm of nature. To ensure authenticity, the Astor Court was constructed by modern day Chinese craftsmen, who were brought in for the project through a special agreement between The Met and the Chinese government.

“I don’t want to downplay the idea that China’s culture is very different from our own,” says curator Mike Hearn, “But China, in the long run, its philosophy, its sense of poetry, its sense of history and its sense of reverence for the individual really resonate with the deepest values in the West.” Great Museums’ writer-producer Chesney Doyle adds, “Through ‘West Meets East’ and The Met’s spectacular collection, we hope viewers gain a new way of looking at the world.”