
Quiet Visions: Chinese Album Painting from Ming to Qing
November 21, 2026 - October 3, 2027
The Sit Gallery (203)
Free Exhibition
This exhibition presents a rare selection of Chinese album leaves from the Ming through the Qing dynasty (14th–19th Century) from Mia’s collection. Intended for intimate viewing by hand, album leaves fostered quiet reflection and close looking. Within these modest formats, artists condensed expansive worlds into refined spaces filled with landscapes, flowers, birds, and poetic scenes.
The exhibition juxtaposes the meticulous elegance of court academy gongbi painting with the expressive freedom of literati xieyi styles. Executed on silk and paper with ink and color, these works reveal centuries of technical mastery, literary imagination, and contemplative artistic vision.
Fang Shishu, Chinese, 1692–1751. Qing dynasty (1644–1911). Double Album of Miniature Landscape Paintings, 1723. Ink and color on paper. The Ruth Ann Dayton Chinese Room Endowment Fund. 2009.56.2.1-3