Recarving China's Past

PRINCETON, N.J.

:For more than 1,000 years, the burial site known as the Wu Family Shrines in the Shandong Province of northeastern China has served as a benchmark for the study of the Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220) - one of the defining periods in Chinese history that helped shape the artistic, cultural, intellectual, political, religious and social foundations for Chinese civilization.

New scholarship led by Princeton University, which will be presented at the Princeton University Art Museum in the exhibition "Recarving China's Past: Art, Archaeology and Architecture of the Wu Family Shrines" from March 5-June 26 and in an accompanying catalog and symposium, will likely prompt significant reexamination of the site's long-accepted implications, including even its attribution to the Wu family.

The exhibition and catalog reinterpret the shrines based on the discovery, since the 1980s, of additional structures and archaeological materials and evidence that some of the writing and pictorial carvings at the site may have been recut over the intervening centuries, essentially recarved to fit prevailing attitudes and assumptions about the Han era.

Tomb art provides the earliest surviving examples of the arts of China - painting, lacquer ware, bronzes, jade and architecture. During the Eastern Han dynasty, from AD 25 to 220, China's territories expanded and great strides were made in diplomacy, trade and technological innovation, including the development of astronomical instruments, the sundial, the seismograph and paper.

First recorded in 1064, the Wu family shrines, thought to have been erected in the mid-Second Century AD, have served as the benchmark for the study of Chinese art of this period because when they were unearthed they were one of the few known monuments said to date from the Han dynasty. Stylistic comparisons to the inscriptions and carvings that cover the walls and ceilings of the site's structures have been essential to dating subsequently excavated Han tombs and artifacts, and the inscriptions themselves have been crucial to understanding Han intellectual thought.

"Recarving China's Past" presents a new investigation into the architectural, iconographic and stylistic interrelationships of the structures and reliefs on the cemetery complex. Traditionally, the mortuary structures' pictorial imagery has been thought to represent stone carving of the Han dynasty. Signs of recarving, anachronisms and problems in the text sources associated with the Wu shrines, however, indicate that some of the carvings and many of the inscriptions may have been added or redone years after the cemetery complex was built, essentially altered to reflect current ideas and attitudes about the Eastern Han era.

The centerpiece of the exhibition is the museum's own set of rare Nineteenth Century ink on paper rubbings of the Wu shrines pictorial carvings. These rubbings depict scenes of filial piety, battles and myths that have been synonymous with Han dynasty beliefs and tenets of exemplary behavior.

Computer-generated models will reconstruct and reinterpret the original layout of the shrines, and some 60 works of art from the museum's collection, as well as objects borrowed from museums in the United States, Canada, Europe and China, will be exhibited, bringing these reliefs to life. The works include carved pictorial stones from the Wu cemetery area, as well as sculptures, bronzes, lacquer, ceramics, glass and jade artifacts from the Han dynasty era.

Lending institutions include the Art Institute of Chicago, American Numismatic Society, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Royal Ontario Museum and Yale University Art Gallery. The exhibition will also feature the first showing in the United States of carved pictorial stones borrowed from the Shandong Provincial Museum and the Shandong Stone Inscription Art Museum in China.

There are several related programs, including lectures, gallery talks, companion events and performances scheduled. In addition, in conjunction with the exhibition, a two-day international symposium will explore the architecture, art, and culture of China's Han dynasty. The symposium is free, but registration is required. For more information or to register, call the museum at 609-258-3788 or e-mail artmus@prince ton.edu.

The museum is located in the center of the Princeton University campus, next to Prospect House and Gardens. For information, 609-258-3788 or princetonartmuseum.org.