A rare opportunity to appreciate over 100 Chinese masterworks of Flower-and-Bird Painting by 59 artists through 500 years of the Ming and Qing dynasties.

The highest forms of Chinese art have always been regarded as painting and calligraphy. The three major traditional Chinese painting genres consist of landscape, figures, and flower-and-bird painting. This first exhibition presented by the China Institute Gallery gratefully introduces the masterworks from two renowned museums of China, Tianjin Museum and Changzhou Museum with a featured extraordinary handscroll by the most famous monk painter Zhu Da (1626-1705, known as Bada Shanren): Flowers on a River. This over 40 feet long handscroll, visually and artistically states the artist’s life journey and marked him a forever-remembered individualist artist.

The exhibition also attempts to systematically review the two major painting styles of academy and literati with several noticeable painting schools and explore the significance of this genre that thrived and endured for over a thousand years as it transformed the observation of nature into art and culture. It transmitted the traditional Chinese concept of “humanity in harmony with nature” as well as a universal outlook and the wisdom of life. It is arranged in three sections: “Precious Plums of the Palace: Academicism and Court Painters”; “Fragrant Plums in the Wild: The Literati and Their Painting Schools”; and “Vitality of Nature: Flower-and-Bird Painting and Social Customs.”

Leadership gifts for Flowers on a River have been provided by the following: Henry Luce Foundation; Center for Language Education and Cooperation; LIU Dan and WANG Huiyun; and an anonymous donor. Additional support has been provided by: CHEN Chunyang; E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation; Winnie C. and Michael Feng; The Shau-Wai and Marie Lam Family Foundation; Dame Jillian and Dr. Arthur M. Sackler Foundation for the Arts, Sciences and Humanities; James P. Geiss and Margaret Y. Hsu Foundation; Joseph Tse Foundation; Angela H. King; and Shining Sung.

Flowers on a River is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Flowers on a River is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

This exhibition is lead curated by Willow Weilan Hai, Director, and Chief Curator of China Institute Gallery, with guest co-curators Chen Zhuo, Former Director of Tianjin Museum; Lin Jian, Director of Changzhou Museum; and David Ake Sensabaugh, Former Ruth and Bruce Dayton Curator of Asian Art at Yale University Art Gallery.