Chinese artifacts on display in Smathers Library

“Smathers Libraries Chinese Artifacts – Literary and Otherwise” will be on display in the Smathers Library second floor gallery June 4 through July 30, 2009. The opening reception will be held Thursday, June 4 at 4:00 p.m. in the gallery.

Over the last decade the Smathers Libraries has been actively building the Chinese Studies Collection in print as well as electronic, film and other non-book formats, to meet the curricular, research and informal reading/viewing needs of the UF community.  This exhibit of artifacts, many coming to the library courtesy of a recent generous donation, features art that may or may not contain literary components, but that illustrates the refined aesthetic and literate sensibilities that underlie traditional Chinese cultural production, as it played out in such works as scroll paintings that include calligraphic word puzzles and ancestral portraits that honor the family names through history.  The magnificent 13th-century Head of Guanyin, the Goddess of Mercy and Protector of Children, who was highly revered and often portrayed in Chinese literature influenced by Buddhism and Taoism, forms the centerpiece of this exhibit.

The exhibit is free and open to the public. The gallery is open Monday-Friday, 9:00 a.m. – 4:45 p.m.