Free Treasures...for the Viewing C

Amid the spacious and magnificently wooded campus with old growth trees, we approached the red brick, eclectic Victorian, late 19th Century University Fine Arts Museum building, AKA, “Old Gym.” We had arrived--destination Vanderbilt University, Nashville TN, five millennia of Chinese art.

As avid University Museum buffs, this was a new “site.” Joseph Mella, museum director, kindly lead us through the exhibit --Beauty and Power: Chinese Art from the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Collection.
The wood floored, high ceilinged gallery held 66 pieces dating from within the Neolithic period (6000-2000 B.C.E.) to Qing Dynasty pieces (1616-1911).

Perched on a platform above eye level was a life sized Buddhist sculpture. This Bodhisattva (a Buddhist designation for one who postpones Nirvana until all sentient beings have been saved) was made of clay with painted and gilded decoration. Gazing with eyes from the 17th Century, its serene face and meditative lotus pose captured our attention and “held us.”

Pieces which let us travel further back in time were two jade ritual funerary objects from Neolithic gravesites. A green “bi Disk” was of flat circular form with a smaller concentric opening. A second piece was in the form of a four sided cylinder. Referred to as a “cong” this object for the dead had an incised surface and a most perfectly formed hollow shaft interior. What was this tomb piece used for? Suggestion was that it was a protective object, used in the afterlife. We mused on the significance of using jade.

Eugene was inspired by a group of four Qing dynasty scrolls. The free brush work of paint on the long and narrow black paper showed the use of “chiaroscuro “ to shade out the twisting and turning of images, lending a softness to the works. These pieces had such a naturalistic look with an uncanny resemblance to early photographic negatives, with darks and lights being reversed. I bonded with a Western Han Dynasty bronze tripod vessel used to cook meat. Heavy , substantial and well designed, I wondered what kinds of meals it cooked in its time.

This exhibit included bronze vessels, carvings in jade, Buddhist images, lacquer pieces, ceramic ware, arts of the tomb, scholarly paintings and ancestral portraits. Joseph Mella gave a very complete description of the genesis of the present collection with detailed accounts of many of the patrons who made the collection possible through generous gifts over the past 35 years. One strikingly elegant piece was called Vessel with incised Lilies. This Ding white porcelain vase was made for the Royal Family from the Northern Song Dynasty. It was donated in 1999 and, as one of the collection highlights, is valued at $200,000.

We returned the following day to spend more time encountering the beauty and the power of the pieces and felt awed to have been in touch with “glimpses” of past Chinese life, through its art. The gallery offers a quiet setting to experience works. This exhibit closed September 22 and was in conjunction with a lecture on September 20, 2007 entitled Sino-Tibetan Tankas for the Ming Court, given by Marsha Haufler, Professor of Art History at the University of Kansas.

A new exhibit entitled More Than One: New Contemporary Prints and Multiples from the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Collection will run from October 4 - December 7, 2007

Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery is located at 23rd and West End Avenues, Nashville, Tn.
For more information: 615-322-0605 Gallery 615-343-1704 Office