Ritual objects, tableware, and household goods produced during the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) were admired for their aesthetic and technical refinements. This exhibition presented sixty-four stunning examples of eighteenth-century monochrome, blue-and-white, and polychrome porcelains from the Taft Museum of Art in Cincinnati, Ohio. Selected ceramics were chosen for the decorative motifs that conveyed the social, political, and cultural messages of the ruling class. At center stage were the symbolic meanings of colors, forms, narrative scenes, linguistic and visual puzzles, as well as puns embedded within the decoration of the objects. By reading and interpreting the variety of decorative elements, the exhibition explored the literary and artistic sources of images and symbols.
As You Wish: Symbol and Meaning on Chinese Porcelains from the Taft Museum
如意：中国瓷器上的吉祥图案
October 23 – January 15, 1994
Curated by David T. Johnson
Media Coverage
- Holland Cotter, “Art View: Pecking Order of a Chinese Court, Told in Porcelain,” The New York Times, November 28, 1993.
“A small, beautiful exhibition at New York’s China Institute in America on East 65th Street in Manhattan turns an interpretive eye on just such material — 18th- century Chinese porcelains, all from the collection of the Taft Museum in Cincinnati — and reveals rich layers of political and personal meaning in dishes small enough to fit in the hand.”
Media Coverage
- The New Yorker
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