About half a year ago, Stephen Little (curator and head, Chinese
and Korean Art) and I both arrived to the museum. Our first
mission was to bring LACMA’s collection of Chinese art back on
display. As of this past weekend, approximately forty objects
are now on view. The reinstalled gallery is designed to tell the
history of art in China, with each dynasty distinguished by
examples that reflect the aesthetics, technology, and ideology
of their time period. To achieve this goal, nothing is more
illuminating than our best-known pieces. One of the most
celebrated early Chinese artworks from LACMA’s collection is a
cauldron called ding from the Zhou dynasty (1046–256 BC). This
ding is from a set that would include more vessels of different
shapes and sizes. Called mingqi in Chinese, meaning “spirit
objects,” such sets were used during burial rituals and
ceremonies conducted for ancestors, and demonstrate the
importance of ancestral worship in the early times of Chinese
civilization. Equally famous is a seated Budd