Ten Sites Associated with Ruan Yuan

Ten Sites Associated with Ruan Yuan

Wang Jun

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

During the nineteenth century, the scholar-official Ruan Yuan towered over the cultural life of the city of Yangzhou. A deeply proud Yangzhou native, Ruan Yuan sponsored major building and publishing projects that valorized his home city, becoming, for many people of his day, the face of Yangzhou. This album depicts ten famous sites in Yangzhou associated with Ruan Yuan, from his family temples to historical sites that he patronized. Equal parts a visual biography of a man and a portrait of a place, this unusual album shows the creative potential of the format, in which the civic and the personal can be interwoven into a single, multiphase story.

Asian Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Ten Sites Associated with Ruan YuanTen Sites Associated with Ruan YuanTen Sites Associated with Ruan YuanTen Sites Associated with Ruan YuanTen Sites Associated with Ruan Yuan

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.