Curator Conversations
Throughout the year during free, public presentations, Norton curators provide insight and context to exhibitions they have organized and art and artists they have studied and admire.
VIRTUAL Curator Conversation: Wu Bin’s ’Ten Views of a Lingbi Rock’: Rediscovering a Masterpiece That Was Never Actually Lost
Wednesday, November 18 / 2PM-3PM
ONLINE: Wu Bin’s ’Ten Views of a Lingbi Rock’: Rediscovering a Masterpiece That Was Never Actually Lost
Wednesday, November 18, 2pm
The most extraordinary painting of a fantastic rock ever created in China is Wu Bin's Ten Views of a Lingbi Rock, 1610. It depicts 10 separate views of a single stone from a famous site in the county of Lingbi in East China's Anhui province. In December of 1989 this handscroll became the first million-dollar Chinese painting ever sold at Sotheby’s. More than three decades later in a highly anticipated auction at Poly Auctions in Beijing, the painting sold in October for approximately 76.6 million dollars. Arnold Chang, former Director of Chinese Paintings at Sotheby’s for more than fifteen years, describes the history of the painting and relates the back-story of how this remarkable artwork ended up for sale in New York and subsequently returned to China.
Free
WU BIN, Ten Views of a Lingbi Rock (detail), China, 1610, handscroll, ink on paper, 21 7/8 x 372 3/8 in., photo courtesy of Poly Art Museum, Beijing.
Arnold Chang, former Director of Chinese Paintings at Sotheby’s
Support for Curator Conversations was provided by the Gayle and Paul Gross Education Endowment Fund.