Gallery Type: Workshop

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.

Discover China Through Art (DCTA), China Institute Gallery’s innovative art education program for groups, will introduce participants to our special showcase: Mountains and Painting: An Educational Journey Through Landscape Art. It features thirteen artists through twenty-two works of art to reveal the importance of mountain culture in Chinese history and art. Each group visit consists of a three-part program featuring an introductory video presentation, a docent-led gallery tour, and a hands-on art workshop, all of which can be adapted for different age groups and interests.

In Chinese legends, mountains are pillars that hold up the sky. By examining the impact of mountains on Chinese culture and its traditional aesthetic, this showcase reveals the formats, compositions, techniques, subjects, and aesthetics of Chinese painting. Participants will find a strong connection between landscape photography and painting. Our hands-on Chinese landscape painting workshop provides rare opportunities to learn and apply fundamental ink and brush techniques.

This special showcase was created in response to requests from New York City educators—who are once again teaching their students in person—for the resumption of China Institute Gallery’s onsite field trip program (DCTA).