The MFA’s encyclopedic collection narrates the history of art in China from the Neolithic period to the present, and covers all the most important traditional media, including ceramics, bronze, painting, calligraphy, textiles, stone sculpture, jade, and lacquer. The Chinese collection’s breadth is matched by significant depth in key areas, including early figure painting, Buddhist painting, bird-and-flower painting, stone sculpture, Song-dynasty ceramics, and Qing-dynasty porcelain.
Based initially on the gifts of Boston collectors, the Chinese holdings grew thanks to informed purchasing by early curators Ernest F. Fenollosa, Okakura Kakuzô, and John Ellerton Lodge. The collection took further shape under Tomita Kôjirô. During his long tenure as curator, from 1931 to 1963, Tomita cultivated fruitful relationships with local ceramic collectors Charles Bain Hoyt and Eugene and Paul Bernat. While acting as curator from 1966 to 1981, Jan Fontein bolstered the collection’s holdings in numerous areas, most notably that of Ming and Qing blue-and-white porcelain. Wu Tung, curator until 2004, stewarded the Chinese collection into the twenty-first century by strengthening the areas of Neolithic ceramics and modern Chinese painting and calligraphy. |
