Treasure cabinet
Cangbaoge, or "cabinet of treasures", was a piece of wooden furniture or a well-decorated room for collectors to store and exhibit their cultural assets in ancient China. The National Art Museum of China has adopted this term to name an exhibition hall on its sixth floor and has turned it into a permanent display room for its collection. Artworks on show are usually paintings and sculptures of comparatively small sizes. Recently, the museum renewed the display, including Ducks in Spring River, a landscape painting by Ren Bonian (1840-95), a co-founder of the Shanghai painting school, and Peaches, by Wu Changshuo, another prominent art figure in modern Chinese history. Also on show is Goddess of Cloud, in which Fu Baoshi (1904-65) visualized the world of deities as described in Jiuge, a collection of 11 poems attributed to Qu Yuan, the poet and politician who lived through the third and fourth centuries BC. The exhibition runs until Feb 20.
9 am-5 pm, closed on Mondays. 1 Wusi Dajie, Dongcheng district, Beijing. 010-6400-6326.
