Poetry on the Wind: The Art of Chinese Folding Fans from the Ming and Ch’ing Dynasties

6 January–20 February 1983

The Chinese fan is a genre to itself. Fans were painted by masters of the technique and are embellished with gold leaf paper, paintings of landscapes, rocks, figures, and flowers, and are often complemented by elaborate calligraphy. The exhibition of 74 fans from the 15th through the 18th centuries at the Smart Museum explored the fan as a vehicle for expression in Chinese painting and represented the first serious study in English of the Chinese fan as an art form. The exhibition was accompanied by lectures delivered by Professor Harrie Vanderstappen, Professor of Art and Far Eastern Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago, and Anthony Yu, Professor in Divinity and Far Eastern Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago. Chinese artist Monica Liu also demonstrated fan-painting techniques at a connected event.

Curator: The show was organized by the Honolulu Academy of Arts, and after exhibition at the Smart Museum, it will travel to the St. Louis Art Museum and on to the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Richard A. Born, Curator of the Gallery, organized the exhibition for the Smart Museum.

Funding was provided in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. 

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