… Exhibition at University Museum also includes reception, guest lecture
The University of Mississippi Museum examines ancient Chinese ceramics and the culture of their time with its latest exhibition, “On the Silk Road and the High Seas: Chinese Ceramics, Culture and Commerce.”
On loan from the Norton Museum of Art, “On the Silk Road and the High Seas” will be on display from Jan. 24 to Aug. 4. An opening reception is set for 5-7 p.m. Feb. 16.
Virginia Bower in China.
“This exhibition represents a strong partnership between the museum, the Croft Institute for International Studies and the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College to provide the opportunity for students and community members alike to view, study and enjoy a unique collection of thousands of years and multiple dynasties of Chinese ceramics within a clear historical, economic and cultural context,” said Emily Dean, museum program coordinator.
The exhibit, which includes more than 70 objects, focuses on why Chinese ceramics were such prized commodities, both at home and abroad. Examples of proto-porcelain appeared in China about 3,000 years ago and hard-paste porcelain began to be made around 1,800 years ago. The precious product was sometimes called “white gold,” especially in the West.
Foreign trade and changing domestic markets played a role in stimulating Chinese potters to continually reinvent their repertoire of shapes and decorative techniques. These exchanges also illuminate important episodes in cultural history.
Coinciding with the exhibition, the museum will host a lecture at 7 p.m. Jan. 26, presented by the university’s Croft Institute for International Studies and Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College, featuring Virginia L. Bower, adjunct associate professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. An eminent visiting scholar, Bower will offer unique insights in her lecture, “From Mundane to Magnificent: Chinese Ceramics at Home and Abroad.” The event is free and open to the public.
“Professor Bower’s lecture provides the perfect introduction to the exhibition, and we are excited to develop our relations both within the university and the Oxford community by providing unique, insightful, and engaging programming for audiences of all ages,” Dean said.
Also a frequent visiting instructor at Bryn Mawr College in Philadelphia as well as at Kean University and Rutgers University in New Jersey, Bower did her graduate work in Chinese art and archaeology at Princeton University. She has visited China numerous times, first as a student of Chinese in Taiwan, and later doing research as well as acting as a tour lecturer for groups sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History, Princeton University Art Museum, Smithsonian Institution and other educational and museum institutions. Her special interests are Chinese ceramics and the arts and culture of the early imperial dynasties.
Bower has contributed to numerous museum catalogues and wrote an essay on Chinese art for “Sunnylands: Art and Architecture of the Annenberg Estate” (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010). She also was one of the three co-editors of “Chinese Ceramics: From the Paleolithic Period through the Qing Dynasty” (Yale University Press, 2010).
The earliest era of Chinese trade with lands to the west began more than 2,000 years ago. Before there was a Silk Road, Chinese records refer to a Jade Road, where traders from the East and West met at the oasis of Khotan in Central Asia. There, the Chinese acquired the gemstones they valued most.
During the 18th century, a flourishing shipping business, known as the “China Trade,” developed between Western nations and the Chinese port of Canton in the upper reaches of the Pearl River Delta. Trade concentrated on tea, silk and inexpensive porcelain. “Fancy” goods and special orders, like the armorial porcelain and large decorative pieces – particularly punch bowls – were privately traded by ships’ officers.
The University Museum is at the intersection of University Avenue and Fifth Street in Oxford. Museum hours are 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays. Admission is free. For more information, visit http://www.museum.olemiss.edu or call 662-915-7073.