Enfilade

Ding Guanpeng (active 1726–1770), A Night Banquet at the Peach and Plum Garden, Qing dynasty (1644–1911), handscroll, ink, and colour on paper
(Beijing: The Palace Museum)

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From the press release and the general exhibition description:

A Movable Feast: The Culture of Food and Drink in China

Hong Kong Palace Museum, 19 March — 18 June 2025

A Movable Feast: The Culture of Food and Drink in China offers a fresh perspective centred on the concept of ‘mobility’, connecting significant aspects of Chinese food culture. Over 110 exquisite artefacts have been meticulously selected to explore the evolution of food vessels, eating practices, and related traditions, comprehensively illustrating the rich culinary culture and lifestyle throughout the history of China. Food culture encompasses the sourcing and utilisation of ingredients, the preparation and processing of food, and the consumption of food as well as the customs, etiquette, and ideologies developed around eating and drinking. It touches nearly every aspect of our material and spiritual life. According to anthropological archaeologist Kwang-chih Chang, “one of the best ways of getting to a culture’s heart would be through its stomach.”

Food culture is naturally an important element of the Chinese civilisation. This exhibition invites visitors to enjoy a multicourse feast spanning five thousand years of Chinese history. The first part, “Crossing from Life to Death”, features a ceremonial meal for the deceased. Showcasing ritual and burial objects related to food and drink dated from the Neolithic period (about 10000–2000 BCE) to the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE), this section demonstrates the importance of transferring food and drink to the afterlife in Chinese beliefs. The second section “Crossing Cultures” presents a multicultural banquet, focusing on eating and drinking vessels from the Tang (618–907) to Song (960–1279) periods, such as platters and ewers introduced to China through the Silk Routes. It reveals how China and Central and West Asia embraced each other’s eating practices. The next section “Crossing Mountains and Lakes” exhibits famous scenes of literati gatherings and picnic sets produced in the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1911) dynasties, which demonstrates the important role food and drink played at elegant gatherings and excursions. Finally, at the “Crossing Time” multimedia table, visitors are encouraged to find out more about the past and present lives of modern eating and drinking vessels.

Accompanying the exhibition is the publication A Movable Feast: The Culture of Food and Drink in China, available in both Traditional Chinese and English. The book features six chapters written by a team of scholars and experts from the Hong Kong Palace Museum and around the world—addressing how people have traversed the culinary landscape with food and eating utensils for 5,000 years, examining preparations for the afterlife, adaptations to foreign culinary practices from other regions, and the enjoyment of outdoor picnics. The catalogue will be available at the Hong Kong Museum and later from major bookstores in Hong Kong.

Crossing from Life to Death: Feeding the Spirits

The first section features food and drink vessels used in rituals and burials from the Neolithic period to the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE). Key objects on display include the zun (wine vessel) for Father Ding and the jue (wine vessel) of Marquis of Lu from the Palace Museum’s collection, dating back to the Western Zhou dynasty (about 1100–771 BCE). These bronze ritual vessels were used for making offerings and served as a medium between people and spirits.

A dou (food vessel) with cord pattern from the Warring States period (475–221 BCE) was a container for pickles, preserved vegetables, meat sauce, gravy, and more. In a first-century Chinese dictionary, the character feng, meaning abundance, is explained by a pictograph of a dou filled with food, while some scholars further interpret it as depicting two skewers of meat on a dou. The Chinese character li, meaning ritual, also has a component of feng, a further indicator of the significance of food and food vessels in Chinese culture.

During the mid-to late Western Han dynasty (206 BCE–8 CE), earthenware burial objects in the shape of granaries, wells, stoves, pigsties, and chicken coops were prevalent, not only mirroring the way of life and the flourishing food culture of the time but also signifying people’s desire for an abundant afterlife. A model of a brazier with cicadas, from the Hong Kong Museum of Art, was fired using low-temperature lead glaze, resulting in striking colours. The roasting rack with two rows of cicadas illustrates the custom of eating cicadas during this period.

Crossing Cultures: Nomadic Eating Practices

The second section presents the intersection and integration of culinary customs between China and Central and West Asia during the Tang (618–907), Song (960–1279), and Yuan (1271–1368) dynasties, demonstrating how the richness and evolution of ‘tradition’ develops over time. The introduction of new ingredients, utensils, and tall furniture to the Central Plains via the Silk Routes significantly transformed the region’s food culture. Foods from Central Asia were given the prefix hu (roughly indicates regions beyond the Central Plains of China), as seen in terms like hujiao (black pepper), hutao (walnuts), and huma (sesame), which remain widely used today

Among the exhibits in this section is a quatrefoil cup from the Tang Dynasty (877), which traces its origins back to the Sassanian Empire (present-day Iran). Scholars believe it is associated with the term ‘poluo’, a foreign term that frequently appeared in Tang and Song poetry, referring to a drinking vessel for alcoholic drinks. The renowned poet Li Bai (701–762) wrote about it, saying “Grape wine, gold poluo, a hu girl aged 15 years was carried by a fine horse.” To this day, the term ‘gold poluo’ is used in Cantonese to describe a greatly cherished child. Another key exhibit, a phoenix-head ewer, which features a handle and spout. This vessel exemplifies how the nomadic drinking custom of pouring wine from ewers gradually replaced the tradition of spooning wine from a jar with a ladle in the Central Plains.

With the introduction of hu foods to the Central Plains, large platters emerged during the Tang dynasty to accommodate nomadic foods such as hubing (hu flatbread) and sushan (shaved ice-like dessert). By the Yuan and Ming (1368–1644) periods, large platters produced in China had become important export commodities, enjoying popularity in the Middle East. Historical records from the Ottoman Empire indicate that porcelain was frequently used for banquet serving ware during significant ceremonies, such as the sultan’s accession, birthdays, and weddings. One of the exhibits, a dish with chrysanthemum and lotus scrolls from the Ming dynasty closely resembles a 15th-century blue-and-white platter in the collection of the Ardabil Shrine in Iran, exemplifying the multidirectional nature of cultural exchange.

Crossing Mountains and Lakes: Packing the Perfect Picnic

The third section showcases the mobility of food and drink across different landscapes by presenting artworks and picnic sets of the Ming and Qing dynasties. Historically significant excursions and picnics have become a source of inspiration for numerous calligraphies, paintings, and other works of art. For example, A Night Banquet at the Peach and Plum Garden by the renowned Qing court painter, Ding Guanpeng (active 1726–1770), portrays the famous Tang poet Li Bai (701–762) and his cousins enjoying a banquet amidst a garden filled with peach blossoms.

During the Ming and Qing dynasties, the custom of dining on pleasure boats became a particularly popular activity along the lower reaches of the Yangtze River. Late Ming literati considered that an elegant pleasure boat should accommodate “six hosts and guests and four attendants” and allow them to brew tea during the excursion. A notable exhibit, an ivory boat from the British Museum’s Qing dynasty collection, vividly captures a leisurely outing on the water: two bearded men enjoy a chat over tea under the canopy of the boat, while others carry a food container and net freshwater fish from the lake.

The design of the paraphernalia used for these excursions was intended to keep objects organised, preventing them from colliding, and ensuring that the objects remained safe and accessible during travel. The Qing imperial court later adopted these organisational boxes to manage and store cultural artefacts accumulated in the palaces. The exhibition features a box of curiosities assembled during the Qing dynasty, intricately designed to hold a variety of antiques crafted from different materials, transforming it into a curated collection of treasures.

Crossing Time: The Heritage

The final section features multimedia interactive installations that blend ancient and modern scenes and artefacts, inviting the audience to enjoy a virtual feast that transcends time and space. Visitors can simulate ordering food at a virtual dining table while observing the cooking processes of various dishes, allowing them to discover diverse cooking techniques associated with these utensils.

The exhibition is jointly organised by the Hong Kong Palace Museum and The Palace Museum. The exhibits mainly come from The Palace Museum and the Hong Kong Palace Museum. The British Museum, the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Hong Kong Museum of Art, and the Hong Kong Flagstaff House Museum of Tea Ware have also provided a number of loans. The Robert Chang Art Education Charitable Foundation is the exhibition’s Supporting Sponsor.

Hendrick Goltzius, Study of a Right Hand, 1588
(Haarlem: Teylers Museum, N058)

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Recently opened at the AIC:

Lines of Connection: Drawing and Printmaking

Art Institute of Chicago, 15 March — 1 June 2025
Getty Center, Los Angeles, 1 July — 14 September 2025

Curated by Jamie Gabbarelli and Edina Adam

The first exhibition ever to focus on the multiple connections between drawing and printmaking, this presentation brings together around 90 works on paper by some of the greatest artists in the Western tradition to uncover the inner workings of their creative process and offer new ways to think about the links between the two mediums.

Joseph Wright of Derby, Self-Portrait in a Fur Cap, 1765–68, monochrome pastel (grisaille) on blue-gray laid paper, 42.5 × 29.5 cm (Art Institute of Chicago, Clarence Buckingham Collection, 1990.141).

Featuring fascinating drawings and exceptional prints from the late 15th century though the mid-19th century by artists such as Albrecht Dürer, Parmigianino, Rembrandt, Peter Paul Rubens, Maria Sibylla Merian, Francisco Goya, and William Blake, the exhibition explores the creative exchange between the two practices by showcasing preparatory drawings for prints, printed imitations of drawings, and drawn copies of prints. A selection of hybrid works also questions traditional definitions, strict boundaries, and outdated hierarchical distinctions between media.

Among the many remarkable loans enriching the exhibition are two astonishing drawings of a right hand by Hendrick Goltzius, which will be shown alongside each other for the first time in over a generation. Additionally an impressive drawing by Rembrandt of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper makes its Chicago debut. With a wealth of exceptionally beautiful works, Lines of Connection offers fresh perspectives on two intertwined mediums and lifts the curtain on the rarely foregrounded subjects of artistic training, workshop practices, and the afterlife and collecting of works on paper.

Lines of Connection: Drawing and Printmaking is co-organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and the J. Paul Getty Museum. The exhibition is curated by Jamie Gabbarelli, Prince Trust Associate Curator, Prints and Drawings, Art Institute of Chicago, and Edina Adam, assistant curator of drawings, The J. Paul Getty Museum.

Jamie Gabbarelli and Edina Adam, Lines of Connection: Drawing and Printmaking, 1400–1850 (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2025), 230 pages, ISBN 978-1606069653, $40.

Josef Abel, Klopstock’s Arrival in Elysium / Klopstocks Ankunft im Elysium, 1805
(National Gallery Prague)

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Now on view at Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts:

Wild Apollo’s Arrows: Klopstock Cult & Ossian Fever

Die Pfeile des wilden Apollo: Klopstockkult & Ossianfieber

Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien, 7 March — 25 May 2025

Curated by Alexander Roob

The exhibition Wild Apollo’s Arrows: Klopstock Cult & Ossian Fever presents significant artistic works that exemplify the epochal shift from the Enlightenment to the irrationalism of the Storm and Stress movement and Romanticism, exploring for the first time the immense influence of the poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724–1803) on the fine arts and music of his own age.

Decades before the French Revolution, the Age of Enlightenment saw a sudden outbreak of irrational sentiment, expressed in exuberant emotions, notions of spiritualistic gender switching, and a fragmented, heroic, and introspective view of art. This was the onset of an epochal shift with consequences for pictorial art: reliance on the actual appearance of things gave way to the mystical and diffuse, accompanied by a greater interest in the realm of acoustics. Nothing seems to better define this ‘acoustic turn’ than the trope of the blind prophet and lyrical poet, which functioned as a literary model for this new epoch, as seen in the figures of Homer, Ossian, and John Milton. Milton’s grand inner images were proclaimed to be the perfection of the romantic sublime, and the myth of the lost and regained paradise to which he had given literary form was associated with Mesmer’s notion of lucid dreaming. In the early 1750s, German poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock positioned himself as an heir to Milton, with his pietistic epic The Messiah: A Heroic Poem, and in this he issued a challenge to the self-proclaimed English national bard William Blake.

Motif combining works by Johann Peter Pichler after Heinrich Friedrich Füger, Homer Reciting, 1803 (Graphic Collection of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna), and Carl Wilhelm Kolbe the Elder, Ice-skating Bard (‘Braga’), 1793–94 (Hamburger Kunsthalle, Kupferstichkabinett / bpk, photo by Julia Bau), design composite motif: Beton.

For cultural philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder, ‘wild Apollo’s arrows’ were the rousing sounds of an early folk movement and the Nordic dronescapes of a budding nationalist mysticism, which was all heralded in the pseudo-Celtic poem cycle Ossian. In the visions of the superstar poet Klopstock ‘wild Apollo’ appeared in a Celtic-Germanic mix, and the bard’s song and cosmic ice-dance put the world into creative turmoil. Klopstock, a keen ice-skater, who was nowhere more popular than in Austria, became a role-model for a sentimental skating trend that saw motion as a way to transcend limitations.

The exhibition presents art works that exemplify this epochal shift from the Enlightenment to the irrationalism of the Storm and Stress (Sturm und Drang) movement and Romanticism. For the first time, Klopstock‘s immense influence on the fine arts and music of his own age is explored. With interpretations of his work in art and music by Angelika Kauffmann, Heinrich Friedrich Füger, Josef Abel, and Franz Schubert, the republican poet Klopstock was surprisingly still very present in the Habsburg Empire at the time of the Napoleonic Wars. The exhibition blends works of Austrian classicism, evidence of international early romanticism, and the narcotic imagery of the Nazarenes to the accompaniment of music by Joseph Haydn, Christoph Willibald Gluck, and Franz Schubert.

Alongside works from the Paintings Gallery and numerous loans, this exhibition draws widely on works from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna Graphic Collection. The project also integrates works by students from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, and it will be presented in the Exhibit Galerie and three rooms at the Paintings Gallery. A comprehensive publication with essays and illustrations will accompany the exhibition.

With works by Josef Abel, Edmund Aigner, Johann Wilhelm Baur, Thomas Blackwell, William Blake, Filippo Caporali, Thomas Chatterton, Daniel Chodowiecki, Edward ‘Celtic’ Davies, Josef Dorffmeister, Bonaventura Emler, Heinrich Friedrich Füger, Johann Heinrich Füssli, Hendrick Goltzius, Christoph Willibald Gluck, Johann Valentin Haidt, Joseph Haydn, Anton Herzinger, William Hogarth, Bartholomäus Hübner, Anne Hunter, Archduchess Maria Clementina of Austria, Johann Evangelist Scheffer von Leonhardshoff, Friedrich John, Owen Jones, Angelika Kauffmann, John Kay, Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, Joseph Anton Koch, Carl Wilhelm Kolbe the Elder, Simon Petrus Klotz, Leopold Kupelwieser, Johann Caspar Lavater, Johann Friedrich Leybold, William James Linton, Johann Heinrich Lips, Johann Hieronymus Löschenkohl, Josef Löwy, James Macpherson, Charles-François-Adrien Macret, Jacob Wilhelm Mechau, Heinrich Merz, Isaac Mills, Jean-Michel Moreau, Wilhelm Müller, Friedrich Olivier, Carl Hermann Pfeiffer, Johann Peter Pichler, Albert Christoph Reindel, Johan Christian Reinhart, Ferdinand Ruscheweyh, Luigi Schiavonetti, Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Ludwig Ferdinand Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Franz Schubert, Moritz von Schwind, William Bell Scott, Franz Xaver Stöber, Joseph Sutter, Johanna Dorothea Sysang, Giambattista Vico, Marianne von Watteville, Josef Wintergerst, Franz Wolf, Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, Felice Zuliani, and others.

Works after William Blake, Asmus Jakob Carstens, Johann Nepomuk Ender, Heinrich Friedrich Füger, Bonaventura Genelli, Gerdt Hardorff, G. W. Hoffmann, William Hogarth, Angelika Kauffmann, Nicaise de Keyser, Giuseppe Longhi, Johann Friedrich Overbeck, Raffaello Santi, genannt Raffael, Bertel Thorvaldsen, Angiolo Tramontini, Richard Westall.

Contemporary works by students of the Academy such as Christian Azzouni, Ina Ebenberger, Hicran Ergen, Eginhartz Kanter, Julia Kronberger, Prima Mathawabhan, Amar Priganica, Liese Schmidt, Pia Wilma Wurzer, and Ancient Britons Team (ABK Stuttgart).

Alexander Roob, with Sabine Folie, Die Pfeile des wilden Apollo: Klopstockkult & Ossianfieber (Hamburg: Textem Verlag), 248 pages, ISBN: 978-3864853340, €32.

Opening this month at AIC:

Myth and Marble: Ancient Roman Sculpture from the Torlonia Collection

Art Institute of Chicago, 15 March — 29 June 2025
Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, 14 September 2025 — 25 January 2026
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 14 March — 19 July 2026

Curated by Lisa Ayla Çakmak and Katharine Raff

From large-scale figures of gods and goddesses to portraits of emperors and magnificent funerary monuments, this exhibition brings to North America, for the first time, a selection of 58 rarely seen ancient Roman sculptures from Italy’s storied Torlonia Collection. Nearly half of these sculptures, which range in date from the 5th century BCE to the early 4th century CE, have not been publicly displayed in more than 70 years and have been newly cleaned, conserved, and studied specifically for this exhibition, making for a spectacular opportunity to experience their first public presentation in decades.

The Torlonia Collection is not only the largest private collection of Roman marble sculptures in Italy, but it is also arguably the most important of such private collections in the world. Comprising 622 works and a wide range of sculptural types and subjects, its holdings rival those of major institutions in Europe, including the Capitoline and Vatican Museums.

This veritable ‘collection of collections’ was formed in the 19th century by Prince Giovanni Torlonia (1754–1829) and his son Prince Alessandro (1800–1886), primarily through the purchase of several groups of ancient sculpture assembled in early modern Rome, as well as through extensive archaeological excavations on Torlonia estates in Italy. The taste at this time was for complete works of art, and restorations and other interventions carried out across the decades—in some instances by famed sculptors of the day—have impacted the sculptures’ current appearances while also enriching their histories.

By the 1870s, the collection was placed on view in a private museum in Rome, and a number of its masterworks became world-famous—among them the lovely portrait of a young woman known as the ‘Maiden of Vulci’ as well as the ‘Torlonia Girl’. In the wake of the Second World War, Alessandro Torlonia’s museum closed, and the collection went unseen for generations. During this closure, the Torlonia Foundation was created at the behest of Prince Alessandro Torlonia (1925–2017) to continue to both study and conserve the collection and the Villa Albani Torlonia.

Beginning in 2020, a series of exhibitions across Europe have brought selected highlights of the Torlonia Collection to public display once more. Myth and Marble debuts these masterpieces to a North American audience, presenting a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience these exceptional ancient sculptures and explore the fascinating stories they reveal about both their ancient pasts and their modern afterlives.

Myth and Marble: Ancient Roman Sculpture from the Torlonia Collection is co-organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and The Torlonia Foundation, in collaboration with the Kimbell Art Museum, Musée des beaux-arts Montréal, and The Museum Box. The exhibition is curated by Lisa Ayla Çakmak, Mary and Michael Jaharis Chair and Curator, Arts of Greece, Rome, and Byzantium, and Katharine A. Raff, Elizabeth McIlvaine Curator, Arts of Greece, Rome, and Byzantium.

Lisa Ayla Cakmak and Katharine A Raff, eds., with contributions by Silvia Beltrametti and Salvatore Settis, Myth and Marble: Ancient Roman Sculpture from the Torlonia Collection (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2025), 160 pages, ISBN: 978-0300279658, $40.