Gallery Type: Workshop

Chinese New Year, or Spring Festival, is the most important of the traditional Chinese holidays. During this time, windows and doors are decorated with red paper-cuts and couplets featuring popular themes of happiness, wealth and longevity. The Chinese New Year for 2026 falls on Tuesday, February 17. We welcome the year of the Horse!

To celebrate this important yearly event, our DCTA Chinese New Year Program will include a short video about Spring Festival and a calligraphy workshop. After learning a few Chinese characters such as 春（chūn） “spring” and 福 （fú） “good fortune”, participants will learn calligraphy brushstrokes to write a couplet of 一马当先（yī mǎ dāng xiān）“take the lead” and  turn them into festive and beautiful New Year decorations on red paper!

Discover China Through Art (DCTA), China Institute’s innovative art education program for groups, will introduce participants to our fall exhibition –Metamorphosis: Chinese Imagination and Transformation. This exhibition presents 28 contemporary artists of Chinese descent who use experimentation in dynamic and original ways. Across painting, sculpture, photography, animation and installation art, these works by established and emerging artists of different generations and backgrounds create a collective dialogue on themes of impermanence, memory, and reinvention.

Our specialized hands-on workshop, led by an expert art educator, invites participants to create a small folding screen ink painting featuring an orchid theme, inspired by the ink artists showcased in the exhibition. Participants will be guided through fundamental brush techniques before completing their final orchid composition, a keepsake they can take home with them.

Each group visit consists of a three-part program featuring a docent-led gallery talk, a hands-on art workshop along with a slide presentation, all of which can be adapted to different age groups and interests.

Workshop: Folding Screen Orchid Painting/ Sample artwork by Yue Ma

Discover China Through Art (DCTA), China Institute Gallery’s innovative art education program for groups, will introduce participants to our spring exhibition – Eternal Offerings: Chinese Ritual Bronzes from the Minneapolis Institute of Art. This exhibition will showcase one of the world’s greatest collections of ancient Chinese bronzes outside of China from a crucial period in the history of human civilization. Traveling from the collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the extraordinary Bronze Age vessels for food and wine as well as imaginative animal sculptures, are on view for the first time in New York City.

Our specialized hands-on activity will feature a bronze pattern- making workshop. Participants will learn some classical bronze patterns from the exhibition, then use a pen to gently press and emboss bronze patterns on a piece of aluminum foil, creating a metallic texture effect.

Each group visit consists of a three-part program featuring a docent-led gallery talk, a hands-on art workshop along with a slide show, all of which can be adapted for different age groups and interests.

Chinese New Year, or the Spring Festival, is the most important of the traditional Chinese holidays. Often called the Lunar New Year, it begins on the first day of the first month in the Chinese calendar and goes to the 15th day. During this time, windows and doors will be decorated with red paper-cuts and couplets with popular themes of happiness, wealth, and longevity. The Chinese New Year of 2025 falls on Wednesday January 29, it is the year of the Snake!

To celebrate this important yearly event, our DCTA Chinese New Year Program will include a short video of Spring Festival and a calligraphy workshop. After learning a few basic Chinese characters such as “Spring” and “Good Fortune”, participants will learn calligraphy brushstrokes to turn the characters into festive and beautiful New Year decorations on red paper!

Discover China Through Art (DCTA), China Institute Gallery’s innovative art education program for groups, will introduce participants to our spring exhibition – Shan Shui Reboot: Re-envisioning Landscape for a Changing World. This exhibition highlights a new generation of artists in China and the United States who are reinterpreting traditional Chinese landscape painting in the context of today’s global social issues and climate crisis.

Each group visit consists of a three-part program featuring a presentation, a docent-led gallery tour, and a hands-on art workshop, all of which can be adapted for different age groups and interests.

Our workshop will focus on ink tree painting, learning from the renowned ancient painting book “Manual of the Mustard Seed Garden” which nurtured Chinese artists through generations. Trees are one of the main elements, together with rocks, mountains and rivers that formed the basic composition of the traditional Chinese landscape painting. Participants will learn and apply fundamental ink and brush techniques to compose their own landscape painting with trees.

Discover China Through Art (DCTA), China Institute Gallery’s innovative art education program for groups, will introduce participants to our special showcase – Zoom into Painting: Details from the Exhibition Flowers on a River.  It has been created to meet the high demand for field trips and workshops among the students and teachers in New York City and the tristate area.  Each group visit consists of a three-part program featuring a virtual video, a docent-led gallery tour, and a hands-on art workshop, all of which can be adapted for different age groups and interests.

This specially curated showcase will present a virtual viewing video of our previous original exhibition Flowers on a River: The Art of Chinese Flower-and-Bird Painting, 1368-1911 in full scope and with displayed enlarged details of paintings in panels, along with more elaborate introductions of selected works by 19 painters.

Focused on ink plum painting, we have chosen an artwork of Plum Blossoms In the Moonlight, by a 15^th century painter Chen Lu, as our workshop sample.  The ink plum painting is a much-admired painting form for over thousand years since ancient China, presenting the literati’s favorite subject, as a symbol for individualism and endurance.  By zooming into the details of the brushwork, participants will learn and apply fundamental ink and brush techniques to create a unique ink drawing of plum blossoms after practice.

Discover China Through Art (DCTA), China Institute Gallery’s innovative art education program for all age groups, will introduce participants to our gallery talk and hands-on art workshop. Now our experienced docent comes to your school! We provide an interactive art workshop based on our most recent exhibition, Art of the Mountain: Through the Chinese Photographer’s Lens. By examining the impact of mountains on Chinese culture and aesthetics, students will gain a better understanding of China through Chinese geography, history, culture and the national psyche. This program includes an exhibition presentation and landscape painting workshop.