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Telling Images of China
Narrative and Figure Paintings, 15th-20th Century, from the Shanghai Museum
12 February to 2 May 2010
The Chester Beatty Library is delighted to present this major exhibition of thirty-eight paintings from one of the world’s finest collections of Chinese art, the Shanghai Museum. The exhibition includes scrolls and albums by artists active in the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties and the early Republican period after 1912. Each of these ‘story paintings’ retells or illustrates a tale from folk and religious lore, oral and official history, poetry or literature. The exhibition is presented through four sometimes overlapping, sometimes interweaving themes, namely ‘crossings’ – stories about exiles, loyalists and rustics; the supernatural world of popular religion; models and exemplars in history; and finally, emperor-concubine and scholar-beauty romances. There are artworks which illustrate texts inscribed on or beside the paintings themselves. In other cases, the stories illustrated are part of oral history, so that the paintings served as visual props for the viewer to retell popular tales. Collectively, these artworks give a taste of China’s rich mythology and lyric tradition, and show how successive generations of artists gave new life to learning, belief and leisure in pictorial images fit for their own times. Telling Images of China coincides with the run-up to the World Expo in Shanghai in the summer of 2010, and is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue, generously supported by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, an international scholarly conference (30 April-1 May) and a programme of public events.
For the first time, the Chester Beatty Library is offering an additional virtual version of our Telling Images of China exhibition, including all 38 works displayed in the gallery. Web visitors will be able to pan and zoom over high-quality images of the works, and to read commentary on selected images. It is hoped that this online exhibition will enhance visitor's in-gallery experience by allowing them to examine and explore the works on display both before and after their visit, in addition to providing those unable to attend with a glimpse into the exhibition. The virtual exhibition will run in conjunction with the live, and will be available to the public from February 12 through May 2, 2010.
In association with the Radisson Blu Royal Hotel Dublin City.
MANI: The Lost Religion of Light
For over 1500 years a small box lay buried in the sands of Egypt. Its accidental discovery in the 1920s revealed its contents to be the lost books of a world religion. These books belonged to the Manicheans, a religion so popular that it almost replaced Christianity as the dominant religion in many regions as it spread from Persia to Spain in the West and to China in the East. Its success threatened all in authority and led to its ultimate destruction.
Modern students of Manichaeism owe a profound debt to Alfred Chester Beatty for his preservation of the ancient texts of this lost world religion. His library holds the world’s largest collection of Mani’s writings. The publication of Beatty’s manuscripts was entrusted to the International Committee for the publication of the Chester Beatty Manichaean papyri headed by scholars from Denmark, Germany, Australia and the United States. The Manichaean books of the Chester Beatty Library have been the focus of recent publications in the Corpus Fontium Manichaeorum, a major international research and publication project sponsored by UNESCO under the aegis of the Integrated Study of the Silk Road.
This exhibition is a world first, never before has there been a display of Manichaean books. It reveals the story of Mani and his religion. A religion that everyone had thought was destroyed and which everyone wanted to be destroyed.