Over 500 years of Chinese history will be on display at the Vancouver Art Gallery starting next fall.
The exhibition called “The Forbidden City: Inside the Court of China’s Emperors” includes nearly 200 treasured objects from the collections of Beijing’s Palace.
Some of the items include paintings, ceramics, gold and silver wares, enamel and ivory objects, textiles and costumes.
The Forbidden City in Beijing is a historic architectural site that has remained largely mysterious until recent years.
It was the seat of imperial power for China’s emperors for five centuries from 1416 to 1911 during the Ming and Qing Dynasties.
In 1925, the Forbidden City was re-named as Beijing’s Palace Museum.
In 1961, the Forbidden City was designated as one of China’s foremost protected cultural heritage sites, and it became a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1987.
Some of the artifacts that will be displayed in Vancouver have never been seen outside of China.
“About 80 artifacts have never traveled outside the Forbidden City,” says lead curator Dr. Chen Shen.
Shen says there are about 1.5 million objects in the Palace’s collection, many of which were housed in the vaults and were not inventoried until a few decades ago.
He says last December they hand picked about 200 objects for the exhibit from the collection.
“It is very important that we were able to choose these objects ourselves for the Canadian people. Not just take the package from what we were offered,” says Shen.
The exhibition will run from October 18, 2014 to January 11, 2015.
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