Tag: Metropolitan Museum of Art

Museum Shows Explore the Global South

Media Library

This article is part of the Fine Arts & Exhibits special section on the art world’s expanded view of what art is and who can make it. “I think we’re hard-wired to be afraid of people who are different from us,” said Linda Komaroff, a curator of Islamic art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. “A show focused on dining makes it easier. We all eat, we all like food.” Ms. Komaroff was talking about “Dining with the Sultan: The Fine Art of Feasting,” the exhibition she has…

Looking Close at the Fragile Beauty of Chinese Painting

Chin@Strategy

It always feels like early autumn in the Chinese painting galleries of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The lighting is warm but low; the décor, wheat-beige and nut-brown. Despite sparks of color, the ink-and-brush paintings are visually subdued; their images can be hard to read from even a short distance away. And although the galleries hold the museum’s permanent collection of Chinese paintings, no picture stays for long. Compared with Western-style oil painting — a hardy, meat-and-potatoes, survivalist medium — Classical Chinese painting is fragile. Often done in ink on…