Emperors' treasures Chinese art from the National Palace Museum, Taipei

This is the catalogue for an exhibition mounted first in San Francisco (Asian Art Museum, June-September 2016) and then Houston (Museum of Fine Arts, October 2016-January 2017) of Chinese art housed at Taiwan's National Palace Museum. It focuses on dynastic collections from the reign of eight emperors and one empress, spanning almost one thousand years from the Song to the Qing dynasties. Three essays address the history of imperial collecting--specifically, emperors' calligraphy and paintings, emperors who collected antiquities, and imperial patronage in general. The catalogue proper includes 178 works of art. The individual entries, which are rich with curatorial and historic data, are by several dozen authors, many of them curators at the National Palace Museum. The catalogue treats the works of art chronologically by dynastry (Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing). Each section is introduced by He Li (curator, Asian Art Museum), who provides superb, concise histories that emphasize the nature of the various dynasties' collections. The volume also features a chronology of dynastic China, a list of emperors, and an extensive bibliography (in Chinese and English). The volume should have a broad audience, but it will be of particular interest to advanced scholars. Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers. --Dale K. Haworth, Carleton College

Almost 180 artworks are shown in this exhibition catalog of the National Palace Museum, Taipei. Coedited by Asian Art Museum of San Francisco staffers Xu (executive director) and Li (associate curator of Chinese Art), the title looks at objects including porcelain, paintings, calligraphy, and ceramics, as well as historical documents. Chapters written by contributors from the National Palace Museum, Taipei, and the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco describe the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties. In particular, they describe the significance and achievements of seven emperors and one empress from the 12th through 20th centuries, including their political and religious beliefs, while detailing the contributions they made to art. Color photographs with descriptions are plentiful throughout the volume. Also included are a time line of Chinese dynasties and a list of emperors with their reigning years. VERDICT This thorough historical account of Chinese art from the National Palace Museum, Taipei, is highly recommended for undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and researchers of art, art history, and Asian art, as well as anyone interested in these subjects.-Tina Chan, MIT Libs. © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.