Palace to host more thematic exhibitions
Beijing’s Forbidden City, China’s imperial palace from 1420 to 1911, is one of the most visited tourist attractions in the country.
For a long time, exhibitions at the venue — also known as the Palace Museum — “lacked coordination between artifacts and the spaces displaying them”, Wang Yamin, chief exhibition curator at the museum and a member of 13th National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, told China Daily on Monday.
But the situation is likely to be improved as two ornate pieces on silk will once again be showcased to the public in 2020 to celebrate the 600th anniversary of the Forbidden City.
Along the River During the Qingming Festival, a 5.28-meter-long scroll painting, depicts a panorama of flourishing urban life in 12th century Bianliang, today’s Kaifeng in Henan province, which was the capital of the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127). The work will be displayed in September 2020, the museum said.
The work is considered to be one of the best-known ancient Chinese paintings. When it was last displayed in 2015, visitors waited in long lines every day throughout the exhibition.
“In the past, many cultural relics in the museum were simply categorized by different types and were exhibited in chronological order without any particular themes,” Wang said. “Experts understood the academic significance of the cultural relics, but the general public didn’t know how to admire them because there was no thematic organization to the displays.”
According to the museum’s plan, this time the painting will be placed in a large-scale exhibition of urban landscape paintings from ancient China in the Meridian Gate Gallery.
Another highlighted painting, Night Revel of Han Xizai from the 10th century, will be exhibited in the same gallery in May 2020. It vividly depicts a banquet scene at high official Han Xizai’s home. It was last presented to the public in 2011.
“An exhibition of cultural relics has to put people first,” Wang explained. “It is a good exhibition only when young people can go there with aged uncles and aunts and everyone enjoys it.”
In recent years, Wang’s team has endeavored to change the situation by combining more stories together to attract more visitors to the exhibits.
For example, he said that when displaying 13th-century painter Zhao Mengfu’s works, the exhibition hall was decorated as his study to help people better understand his creative inspirations and conditions at the time.
Along the River During the Qingming Festival was used as a teaser to introduce The Stone Moat, an 18th-century masterpiece.
Next year’s innovative exhibition aims to present the everyday lives of urbanites in different dynasties.
Designing exhibitions has therefore become a more complicated undertaking. For an ongoing exhibition on ancient Spring Festival rituals among royalty, more than 100 curators were organized to help put everything together.
Wang revealed that more international cooperation will take place to organize the exhibitions.
In July this year, a porcelain exhibition will present artifacts from both China and those on loan from the British Museum and other toptier institutions worldwide.
Archaeological discoveries from Japan, India, Iran, the United Arab Emirates and elsewhere are to be included in exhibits to show how Chinese celadon pottery varieties played an important role in ancient global trade.
An exhibition of former czars’ garments, photos, royal files and dailyuse objects will be lent by Russia to the Palace Museum in August. It will be the first exhibition of such artifacts outside Russia.
Just last month during the Lantern Festival, the Palace Museum offered two nights of nocturnal tours for the public for the first time, with some parts of the compound illuminated.
It was widely praised, but some people also criticized it for being too ostentatious.
“We’re still newcomers to using digital technology in exhibitions,” Wang said. “It’s normal for people to have different opinions, but I can promise that our next multimedia show will better reflect characteristics of the Forbidden City.”