Congratulations from the World - Exhibition for the World Art Treasure. Co-curator, China Art Museum, Shanghai, 2012.

Congratulations from the World - Exhibition for the World Art Treasure

As an important part of the 2012 Chinese and international exhibition series for the China Art Museum, Congratulations from the World - Exhibition for the World Art Treasure, was based on the theme of an integrated international joint exhibition, separately presenting the ancient, modern, and the contemporary across almost 1200 square meters of exhibition space. The exhibition brought together treasures from the collections of the British Museum; Rijksmuseum Museum, Amsterdam; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Victor Hugo Museum, Paris; the National Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa; the Kitano Museum of Art, Nagano, Japan; and the Javier Marin Sculpture Exhibition recommended by the Consulate of Mexico in Shanghai. In collaboration with these partners, we carefully selected 96 objects to reveal to the audience an overview of the world's art, running through the past and present, crossing continents, and providing an all too brief overview of the cultural heritage of our global community. The exhibition offered Shanghai’s burgeoning community of art lovers the opportunity to appreciate the culture and art of different countries and ethnicities without going abroad.

Congratulations from the World - Exhibition for the World Art Treasure featured the "Cultural Treasures Exhibition" of the British Museum, presenting wooden effigies of the dead from Upper Egypt, dating back to 2200 B.C.E, examples of British painter David Hockney’s acclaimed colored pen works, 19th century mother goddess carvings from Sierra Leone, and the classical ukiyo paintings of Japan. The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, presented Johannes Vemeer’s sublime Woman Reading a Letter (1663), and the classic and exquisite Portrait of Haesje Jacobsdr van Cleyburg (1634), by Rembrandt van Rijn. A successful cooperation with the Whitney Museum of American Art brought 10 representative works spanning 70 years in the history of American modern art come to China for the first time, including the works of Pop Art’s Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, and Andy Warhol; urban graffiti art by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring; and Abstract Expressionist Willem de Kooning. The Victor Hugo Museum, Paris, impressed the Chinese audience with a rare 19th-century collection of Victor Hugo’s hand-painted ink landscape sketches, as well as a selection of art works related to the famous author and his works. Meanwhile the National Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa presented art works representing the blended cultural history of indigenous Māori with immigrants from Europe, Asia and across Oceania, offering an insight into the contemporary South Pacific art style. The Kitano Museum of Art, Nagano, presented watercolor paintings by 10 Chinese and Japanese artists reflecting on traditional Chinese ink art, or San Shui. Finally, the Mexican Consulate participated by supporting a presentation by famous contemporary sculptor Javier Marin, giving the audience an expressive tour of the taut and fantastical world of the acclaimed Central American.