The Oriental Ceramic Society is delighted to announce that the inaugural Susan Chen Foundation Lecture will be delivered by Pengliang Lu of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on Recasting the Past: The Art of Chinese Bronzes, 1100–1900.
In Spring 2025, the Metropolitan Museum of Art will present ‘Recasting the Past’, an exhibition exploring Chinese bronzes made from the twelfth to nineteenth centuries, an important but often overlooked category of Chinese art. So-called ‘later Chinese bronzes’ have long been stigmatized as poor imitations of earlier ancient bronzes. This exhibition seeks to redress this bias by showing the technical virtuosity and aesthetic creativity of these later creations and revealing their immense impact on various aspects of cultural life. Some notoriously difficult issues, such as Song-Yuan (10th–14th century) bronzes, Xuande era (r.1425–1435) censers and archaistic inlaid bronzes, will be explored relying on datable works, archaeological discoveries as well as cross-medium comparisons.
Featuring over 200 works from major collections in China, Japan, Korea, Europe and America, the exhibition will also include paintings, ceramics, jades, and other media to complete the picture of how bronze remained a key symbolic medium in the world of later imperial China.
Pengliang Lu is the Brooke Russell Astor Curator of Chinese Art in the Department of Asian Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. He joined the Museum in 2013 as Henry A. Kissinger Curatorial Fellow. He has curated multiple exhibitions on Chinese decorative arts at the Met, including Children to Immortals: Figural Representations in Chinese Art (2018), Masters and Masterpieces: Chinese Art from the Florence and Herbert Irving Collection (2021) and Embracing Color: Enamel in Chinese Decorative Arts, 1300–1900 (2022). From 2002 to 2008, he worked at the Shanghai Museum, where he coordinated over 20 exhibitions of Chinese and Western art. He has published widely on Chinese ceramics, bronzes, cloisonné and literati objects. He received his PhD from the Bard Graduate Center, New York, where his research focused on bronzes of the Yuan Dynasty.
This lecture is made free to members and available to the public through the generous support of the Susan Chen Foundation.
*Please note that dinner reservations can only be confirmed upon payment and will be closed on 11 October at 12pm noon.