A Passion for Jade: The Bishop Collection at the Metropolitan Museum
VIEW EVENT DETAILSLuncheon presentation by Dr. Jason Sun, Curator of Chinese Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Registration at 12:15 pm
Luncheon at 12:30 pm
Close at 2:00 pm
An industrialist and entrepreneur, Heber R. Bishop was an active patron of the arts and a Trustee of the Metropolitan Museum. His collection of more than a thousand pieces, primarily Chinese jades of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as jades from Mughal India (1526-1858), was formed in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and bequeathed to the museum in 1902. These refined works in this renowned collection represent the sophistication of Chinese jade carvers of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) and the extraordinary accomplishment of the Mughal lapidaries.
Jason Sun is Curator of Chinese art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University and was E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Curator of East Asian Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Art before joining the Metropolitan. He curated the exhibitions The Bishop Jades in 2004, Excellence and Elegance: Chinese Decorative Art in the 18th Century in 2007, and Colors of the Universe: Chinese Hardstone Carvings in 2012. He also worked closely with James Watt, former Chairman of the Asian Art Department, on the 2004 exhibition China: Dawn of a Golden Age (200-750 A.D.) and the 2010 exhibition The World of Khubilai Khan: Chinese Art in the Yuan Dynasty. He has lectured and published widely on his area of expertise including jade carving, metalwork, calligraphy, and Chinese archaeology.