Arts of the Sung and Yüan

Arts of the Sung and Yüan includes papers prepared for a six-session international symposium organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art in conjunction with the exhibition, Splendors of Imperial China: Treasures from the National Palace Museum, Taipei. Our understanding of the art and culture of the Sung and Yüan dynasties has expanded and changed dramatically since a similar exhibition took place at the Museum in 1961–62, Chinese Art Treasures, consisting of a selection of 231 works also from the National Palace Museum, Taipei. Given the presence of so many rare early masterpieces from these periods in the Arts of the Sung and Yüan exhibition and their formative role in shaping the development of later Chinese culture, the Museum has elected to take this opportunity to reexamine with a fresh eye some of the most familiar monuments. This volume is dedicated to furthering the principle of cross-cultural interchange embodied in the exhibition. Just as the 1961–62 exhibition inspired a whole generation of China scholars in the West, the exhibition offered a fitting occasion for a group of scholars from Asia, Europe, and the United States to participate in the scholarly exchange that such a rare opportunity affords. Only through interactions that remind us of the diverse points of view and modes of understanding that works of art engender across space, time, and cultural heritage, can new perceptions and interpretive structures evolve. [This book was originally published in 1996 and has gone out of print. This edition is a print-on-demand version of the original book.]