Thoughts on a museum jaunt
After work today, I popped into one of my favourite local museums Asian Civilisations Museum. It has a pan-Asian focus in how it weaves together art, culture, and history.
Here are some nuggets I found fascinating:
- Chinese sculptors learnt how to cut temples out of rock and sculpt stone images from contact with India.
- Religious sculpture in bronze has a long history in Southeast Asia
- The Buddhist concept of the boddhisatva is an inspiring one, as a boddhisatva is one who has attained salvation but chooses to forgo entering nirvana out of compassion for the suffering of others.
- Dragons have always had important symbolic and ritual meaning in SEA
- After expansion of imperial examination system in Song dynasty (960-1270), scholar-officials became the backbone of a vast bureaucracy that governed China
- The plum blossom is a popular theme in East Asian art, celebrated for its beauty and ability to thrive in adverse conditions
- Western art had a growing influence on 20th century China, especially the emphasis on realism and atmospheric effects
And for reading this far, here are 3 pieces that stood out to me:
Closing thought: while it seems like there’s so much intercultural conflict now, the truth is that we have and will continue to have so much we borrow from each other!