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Los Angeles County Museum of Art announces Ming Masterpieces from the Shanghai Museum

Los Angeles County Museum of Art presents Ming Masterpieces from the Shanghai Museum, an exhibition on view March 3-June 2, 2013.

This exhibition presents ten masterpieces of early Ming dynasty court painting executed in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries in the Forbidden City, in addition to a selection of related Zhe School paintings, all from the permanent collection of the Shanghai Museum. These paintings represent a type poorly represented in American museum collections (with rare exceptions), where the prevailing taste in collecting over the past century has been for literati (scholar-amateur) paintings. The exhibition explores the role of imperial patronage of Ming dynasty painters, the uses of paintings as political propaganda, and the revival of earlier Song dynasty (11th-13th century) painting styles for political purposes. The type of professional and court paintings included in this exhibition have only recently been recognized as one of the leading and most popular types of Ming dynasty painting. – www.lacma.org