Genesis of the Celestial Empire - the jades of the Myers collection
From June 2020 to September 2021, at the Departmental Museum of Asian Arts, 405, Promenade des Anglais Arenas. 68000 NICE
Genesis of the Celestial Empire is a unique exhibition in France co-produced by the Departmental Museum of Asian Arts (Nice) and the Baur Foundation (Geneva), with the generous support of Mr. Sam Myers.
The Myers collection includes one of the most important sets of archaic Chinese jades preserved in Europe.
Honorary General Curator of Heritage, Jean-Paul Desroches is the guest curator of the exhibition. It offers the public an original vision of the history of jade in China.
THE MYERS COLLECTION
A jade panorama
The 150 or so pieces brought together for this exhibition are usually kept in their precious cases out of sight. Their presentation constitutes an event, inviting the public to discover emblematic works but also little-known parts of Chinese civilization.
Indeed, the great age of certain works, produced 4000 years ago, can be explained by the nobility of the material used. The jades presented in the exhibition are in nephrite, or ruanyu (tender jade) in Chinese. It is a calcium magnesium silicate with elongated prismatic fiber crystals characterized by cleavage planes at an angle close to 125 °. Both fragile and resistant, this mineral must be shaped by erosion.
A link since the Neolithic, jade is an incomparable mirror of China. Its interior beauty enchants as much as it questions: it conceals and reveals the foundations of its long history. Each object is like a window open to a world to discover.
