Friday, after the OASIS luncheon, I went to the Art Museum to view the “Power and Glory: Court Arts of China’s Ming Dynasty” exhibit. I had been wanting to see this but the Art Museum isn’t on my regular traffic pattern so I hadn’t gotten around to it yet. However, the hotel where the luncheon was held is about halfway between my house and the museum so it made sense to just go on to the museum once the luncheon was over. The exhibit is closing soon so it was sort of now or never if I was going to see it.
The awful weather of the early morning had cleared away. I found a good parking spot and was soon inside, paying my $3 for the headphones which would provide me with my own personal tour guide to the exhibit.
The exhibit had pieces of china and porcelain, some garments, some scrolls, some jewelry — all of it intricately detailed and interesting. The placards described the various glazes used. There were two items which were roof ornaments. One garment had a wonderfully embroidered yoke on it … but the garment itself hadn’t been finished, evidenced by the raw edges on the underarm and hem.
There were only two pieces of furniture in the exhibit, both of them barrel shaped stools. They had inlaid enamel on the top of them. Earlier placards in the exhibit had explained how the enamel ware is made … layers of various colors of lacquer which are then carved to make the designs.
There were two speakers on the tape guiding me through it, both Chinese. Interestingly enough, some of the exhibits were marked with two “stops” on the tour. The second one was narrated in Chinese. I didn’t listen to any of those but I found it interesting that they had done that. It did cross my mind to wonder how they had decided which exhibits would benefit from the Chinese narration and why they didn’t do that for all of them. Perhaps they were constrained by the length of tape available to them.
My excursion into culture lasted about 1.5 hours and was well worth the time. I don’t know if this is a traveling exhibit but if it should come to a museum near you, I’d urge you to go see it. I think you’ll enjoy it.
