Amid US-China tensions, Washington gallery exhibit highlighting Chinese empresses’ lives serves as cultural bridge
- ‘Empresses of China’s Forbidden City, 1644-1912’, organised by American and Chinese curators, is on view at the Smithsonian’s Sackler Gallery through June 23
- The exhibition offers a rare look at Qing dynasty objects including clothing, jewellery, paintings, furnishings and imperial portraits.
Chinese and American art curators have got involved in efforts to shore up strained US-China relations and enlisted some Qing dynasty empresses in the process.
The timing for the show’s second and final US destination was deliberate, after its debut in August at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts.
“The exhibition was timed to open here in Washington, DC, early in 2019 in recognition of an important milestone for the US-China’s relations: the 40th anniversary of the normalisation of those diplomatic relations,” museum director Chase Robinson said at a preview event on Thursday.
The exhibition – a collaboration between the Palace Museum in Beijing, the Sackler Gallery and the Peabody Essex Museum – offers glimpses into the lives of five empresses who left lasting impact and legacy to the Qing dynasty. The reign of Qing lasted more than two and a half centuries, when the Western world marched from the Age of Discovery to the Industrial Revolution to the brink of the first world war.
Over 100 objects made for, by and about Empress Xiaozhuang, Empress Dowager Chongqing, Empress Xiaoxian, Empress Dowager Ci’an and Empress Dowager Cixi are on display, including imperial portraits, narrative paintings, furnishings, jewellery, costumes and religious art.