US museum’s major ancient China show featuring artefacts loaned from Chinese museums exemplifies cultural exchange amid countries’ ‘tense’ relations

Cleveland Museum of Art’s upcoming exhibition, ‘China’s Southern Paradise: Treasures from the Lower Yangzi Delta’, will tell the story of the Jiangnan region

Featuring art borrowed from Chinese museums, including a portrait of an emperor and old scrolls, it is among the first collaborations of its kind after Covid

Reading Time:3 minutes

Detail from “A Gathering of Five Suzhou Natives” (1368–1644). The handscroll of a group of Suzhou-born officials is in the collection of the Shanghai Museum and is among items loaned from Chinese museums for an exhibition at the Cleveland Museum of Art in the US. Photo: Shanghai Museum

Published: 12:00am, 22 Aug 2023Updated: 8:06am, 22 Aug 2023

Six major Chinese museums are among the international collaborators of a new exhibition at the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA), a reminder that active cultural exchanges between China and America can continue despite continuing political tensions.

“Right now, it is very important to work with China in a time of tense relationship. And culture offers the possibility to connect, to collaborate and communicate,” says Clarissa von Spee, the curator behind “China’s Southern Paradise: Treasures from the Lower Yangzi Delta”, which opens at the 110-year-old museum in Ohio, in the United States, on September 10.

There are around 200 items in the show, with a third selected from the Cleveland museum’s own collection as well as loans from a total of 30 private collections and institutions.

It tells the story of how the region – known as Jiangnan in Chinese – came to be an economic, political and cultural powerhouse, says von Spee, the chair of Asian art and curator of Chinese art of CMA, one of America’s wealthiest museums.

“Kangxi Portrait” (1622) depicts Qing dynasty Emperor Kangxi sitting in front of his books. Loaned from The Palace Museum, Beijing, this piece is one of 36 from Chinese institutions to be featured in the CMA exhibition. Photo: The Palace Museum, Beijing

The six Chinese museums have loaned 36 pieces, including a portrait of the Qing dynasty Emperor Kangxi from the Palace Museum in Beijing, a 12th-century silk robe from the China National Silk Museum, a fascinating painting titled A Gathering of Five Suzhou Natives from the Shanghai Museum, and works from the Nanjing Museum, Zhejiang Archaeological Institute and Zhejiang Provincial Museum.