Rawski Organizes Chinese Portrait Exhibit at Smithsonian

This ink and color on silk images, along with others all made during the 18th and 19th centuries, is part of the Worshipping the Ancestors: Chinese Commemorative Portraits exhibit, at the Smithsonian’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, now through Sept. 9.

University of Pittsburgh history professor Evelyn Rawski of the Asian Studies Program is co-organizer of Worshiping the Ancestors: Chinese Commemorative Portraits, on display at the Smithsonian’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, from now through Sept. 9.

Rawski worked with Jan Stuart, associate curator of Chinese art at the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, in creating the exhibit, which includes intricately detailed, brightly colored, nearly life-size portraits, as well as textiles, furniture, and other Chinese objects created between 1451 and 1943. It is the first exhibit in the West in more than a half century to focus on Chinese ancestor portraits, and is both the largest and most rigorous in explaining the history and socio-religious importance of this category of painting.

Rawski and Stuart also organized and spoke at the symposium, Ancestors, Priests, and Gods: Portraits in East Asia, on June 16, in conjunction with the portrait exhibition.

A fully illustrated 216-page book, Worshiping the Ancestors: Chinese Commemorative Portraits, accompanies the exhibition. Stanford University Press, in association with the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, published the book. Written by Rawski and Stuart, the book includes most of the images of the Sackler’s Chinese portrait collection as well as analytical essays.

For more information on the exhibition, visit the website, www.asia.si.edu.

—Patricia Lomando White