Description
The Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution will partner with the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) in Salem, Massachusetts, and the Palace Museum in Beijing to organize The Last Empresses of China , an exhibition exploring the role of empresses in the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). Timed to coincide with the 40 th anniversary of the normalization of Sino-U.S. diplomatic relations, the exhibition will be presented at PEM from August 18, 2018 to February 10, 2019, and at the Freer/Sackler from March 30 to June 23, 2019.
Determined to retain their Manchu identity, Qing rulers prohibited marriage with the subjugated Han Chinese population, instead choosing their spouses from women born into the conquering elite. While still patriarchal and hierarchical, Manchu society gave women more freedoms than were afforded to Chinese women. For example, Manchu women did not bind their feet.
Because relatively little is known about many of the two dozen imperial consorts of the Qing court, Last Empresses will feature five empresses for whom the historical and visual records are more complete: Empress Xiaozhuang (1613-1688), Empress Dowager Chongqing (1692-1777), Empress Xiaoxian (1712-1748), Empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908) and Empress Dowager Ci’an (1837-1881).
Co-curators Jan Stuart of the Freer/Sackler and Daisy Yiyou Wang of PEM state that, through display and interpretation of approximately 150 objects, including paintings and calligraphy, photographs, clothing, furniture and articles of ritual and daily life, the exhibition will give voice to the stories of imperial women either previously ignored or misinterpreted by history. “These stories,” they write, “uncovered by the latest interdisciplinary scholarship on the Qing dynasty, convey the strength, resilience and agency of women too often dismissed in past accounts as passive or, in the case of Empress Dowager Cixi, vilified” as the quintessential dragon lady. The exhibition addresses issues of women, gender and power, and relates how these empresses contributed to shaping the multiethnic, multicultural society of China’s last dynasty. Empress Xiaozhuang, from an influential Mongol tribe, for example, played a pivotal role in introducing Tibetan Buddhism to the Qing.
The accompanying 300-page catalogue includes contributions by Stuart, Wang, curators from the Palace Museum and others which will advance scholarship on female court culture and Qing history, religion, politics and art. With over 200 color images, this publication will be distributed by Yale University Press.
That the Directors of the Henry Luce Foundation approve a one-year grant of $250,000 to the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution to support the exhibition and catalogue The Last Empresses of China .
