White Crane Mountain, leaf from Album for Zhou Lianggong

Ye Xin

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This painting and its accompanying inscription belonged to an album made for the noted Nanjing collector and high official Zhou Lianggong (1612–1672). A leading patron of contemporary artists, Zhou assembled a number of these albums during the last twenty-five years of his life, when his career required him to travel extensively. Such collaborative works have long been a means for a group of artists to commemorate special occasions, but Zhou’s albums, which sometimes encompassed hundreds of contributions, fulfilled a different function: they included works by professionals and scholar-amateurs, Ming loyalists and Qing officials, traditionalist orthodox painters and innovative individualists. By inviting a wide spectrum of artists to both view and contribute to these albums, Zhou created a unique forum for artists to learn from and appraise one another’s productions.

Asian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met's collection of Asian art—more than 35,000 objects, ranging in date from the third millennium B.C. to the twenty-first century—is one of the largest and most comprehensive in the world. Each of the many civilizations of Asia is represented by outstanding works, providing an unrivaled experience of the artistic traditions of nearly half the world.

Metropolitan Museum of Art