Special Exhibition
Tickets Required

China’s Southern Paradise: Treasures from the Lower Yangzi Delta

Sunday, September 10, 2023–Sunday, January 7, 2024

Location: 003 Special Exhibition Hall
The Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation Exhibition Hall

Featured Art

About The Exhibition

China’s Southern Paradise: Treasures from the Lower Yangzi Delta is the first exhibition in the West that focuses on the artistic production and cultural impact of a region located in the coastal area south of the Yangzi River.

Called Jiangnan, this region has throughout large parts of its history been one of the wealthiest, most populous, and most fertile lands. For millennia, it has been an area of rich agriculture, extensive trade, and influential artistic production. Art from Jiangnan—home to such great cities as Hangzhou, Suzhou, and Nanjing, as well as to hilly picturesque landscapes stretched along rivers and lakes—has defined the image of traditional China for the world.

The exhibition features more than 200 objects from Neolithic times to the 18th century, ranging from jade, silk, prints, and paintings to porcelain, lacquer, and bamboo carvings. Jiangnan’s lush, green scenery inspired artists to conceive it as heaven on earth. Treasures from the Lower Yangzi Delta explores how this region gained a leading role in China’s artistic production and how it succeeded in setting cultural standards. This international exhibition presents works of art from private and public collections and museums in the United States, Europe, China, and Japan.

Docent-Led Exhibition Tours

Exhibition tours are offered at 2:30 p.m. on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, September 19 through December 21; ticket required.

CMA Store

Ji Yun-Fei: Last Days of Village Wen

By Anita Chung Drawing upon the Cleveland Museum of Art’s world-renowned collection of Chinese paintings, this volume presents an insightful study of a museum acquired work acquired by the museum in 2012 that occasions prompts dialogue between traditional forms of art and contemporary environmental issues. Centered on a current and highly controversial venture that involves diverting water from the country’s Yangzi River, Ji Yun-fei’s (b. 1963) visually complex painting, Last Days of Village Wen, uses the traditional Chinese form of the scroll to convey a fictional narrative addressing real and palpable concerns. The contentious undertaking to divert water has resulted in mass human migration and destruction of ecosystems, spurring the artist to reflect on shifting values and to use painting as a vehicle for potential change. This book explores how Ji Yun-fei’s work situates itself within that tense tract between the old and the new, as he incorporates elements of both history and fantasy to highlight modern society’s increasing detachment from ancient notions of harmonious human/nature relationships. 84 pages Published 2016

China’s Southern Paradise: Treasures from the Lower Yangzi Delta

By Clarissa von Spee, Curator of Chinese Art, The Cleveland Museum of Art, with contributions from Yiwen Liu, Curatorial Research Assistant, The Cleveland Museum of Art. China’s Southern Paradise: Treasures from the Lower Yangzi Delta is the first publication in the West that focuses on the artistic production and cultural impact of this region of China. Also called Jiangnan, it is located in the coastal area south of the Yangzi River that has throughout large parts of its history been one of China’s most wealthy, populous, and fertile regions. For millennia it has been an area of rich agriculture, extensive trade, and influential artistic production. Art from Jiangnan—home to such great cities as Hangzhou, Suzhou, and Nanjing, as well as to hilly picturesque landscapes stretched along rivers and lakes—has largely defined the image of traditional China for the world. The lavishly 432-page illustrated catalogue includes introductory essays by internationally renowned scholars covering such topics as Jiangnan in poetry, the region’s economy, silk production, southern green stoneware, landscape painting, color print production and urban culture, Buddhism, and garden culture. The book presents six thematic sections and features more than 200 objects from Neolithic times to the 18th century ranging in media from jade, silk, prints, and paintings to porcelain, lacquer, and bamboo carvings. Edited by Clarissa von Spee, the essays and object entries illustrate and discuss how this region gained a leading role in China’s artistic production and how Jiangnan succeeded in setting cultural standards. Taking this new approach, the international exhibition catalogue highlights iconic works of art as well as new, previously unpublished material, from private and public collections in the United States, Europe, China, and Japan. 432 Pages, 336 color + b-w illus.

CMA Stripe Tie

This tie was inspired by the architecture of Rafael Viñoly, who designed the expansion and renovation of the Cleveland Museum of Art carried out between 2005 and 2012. One of his challenges in the project was to find a way to work with the museum's two existing landmark buildings-one the stately 1916 Beaux-Arts original white stone edifice by Hubbell and Benes, the other the 1971 modernist addition by Marcel Breuer in striped gray granite. Viñoly's response was both witty and reverential, clad with marble and granite bands whose pattern gradually shifts along two grand, zig-zagging wings that embrace the two earlier buildings. Material: 100% silk twill

CMA Sticker Blue- For the Benefit

Vinyl Sticker 3"

Sponsors

Principal support is provided by June and Simon K. C. Li and the MCH Foundation. Major support is provided by the American Friends of the Shanghai Museum and the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation. Generous support is provided by an anonymous supporter and the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support is provided by the Blakemore Foundation, William and Terry Carey, the Gramercy Park Foundation, Carl M. Jenks, the Metropolitan Center for Far Eastern Art Studies, Xiling Group, and Zheng He Management Group.

All exhibitions at the Cleveland Museum of Art are underwritten by the CMA Fund for Exhibitions. Principal annual support is provided by Michael Frank and the late Pat Snyder, the John and Jeanette Walton Exhibition Fund, and the late Roy L. Williams. Generous annual support is provided by an anonymous supporter, the late Dick Blum and Harriet Warm, Gary and Katy Brahler, Cynthia and Dale Brogan, Dr. Ben and Julia Brouhard, Brenda and Marshall Brown, Richard and Dian Disantis, the Jeffery Wallace Ellis Trust in memory of Lloyd H. Ellis Jr., Leigh and Andy Fabens, the Frankino-Dodero Family Fund for Exhibitions Endowment, Janice Hammond and Edward Hemmelgarn, Carl T. Jagatich, Cathy Lincoln, Eva and Rudolf Linnebach, William S. and Margaret F. Lipscomb, Bill and Joyce Litzler, Lu Anne and the late Carl Morrison, Jeffrey Mostade and Eric Nilson and Varun Shetty, Tim O’Brien and Breck Platner, William J. and Katherine T. O’Neill, Michael and Cindy Resch, Betty T. and David M. Schneider, the Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation, Margaret and Loyal Wilson, the Womens Council of the Cleveland Museum of Art, and Claudia Woods and David Osage.

The exhibition catalogue for China’s Southern Paradise: Treasures from the Lower Yangzi Delta was produced with the generous support of the MCH Foundation.

Generous support of the exhibition symposium is provided by the Kingfisher Foundation. Additional support is provided by Bonhams Auctioneers.