From Van Gogh to Turner to fashion designer Paul Poiret, European art masterpieces come to China in ‘most ambitious’ period of cultural exchange
- The UK’s National Gallery and V&A are teaming up with a museum in China and a mall in Hong Kong to exhibit Western art and fashion never before seen in Asia
- Shanghai Museum will show paintings by artists including Botticelli, Titian and Raphael, while Hong Kong’s K11 Musea hosts a show of storied European fashion
Something interesting is going down in London’s Trafalgar Square.
Outside, people are queuing for hot chocolate and mulled wine at the annual Christmas fair. Behind them, huge hoardings have gone up to obscure major renovations at the National Gallery, which dominates the square.
Inside, behind the hoardings, 52 masterpieces of European art dating from the 1400s to World War I are being checked, conserved, reframed and meticulously packed up before being sent to China for the very first time.
An exhibition, “Botticelli to Van Gogh: Masterpieces from the National Gallery, London”, opens in Shanghai in January, and will move on to two other Asian cities later.
Meanwhile, another British cultural behemoth, the V&A (Victoria and Albert Museum), is in Hong Kong for a collaboration with high-end mall and art space K11 Musea and award-winning designer William Chang Suk-ping. The fashion-themed exhibition placed loans from the V&A collection side by side with works by six emerging fashion designers from around Asia.
Cultural exchange between the UK and China has never been more earnest. Chu Xiaobo, the director of the Shanghai Museum, the first stop on the National Gallery exhibition’s Asia tour, has called it “the most ambitious project” ever to show Western artworks in mainland China.
