Hunan Provincial Museum Presents “Towards Modernity: Three Centuries of British Art”

Spring Morning: Haverstock Hill, by George Clausen (1852-1944)

Hunan Provincial Museum will present “Towards Modernity: Three Centuries of British Art” in the Changsha Municipal Museum beginning August, 20. It is the first domestic exhibition that comprehensively displays the development of British art in the past three centuries. The exhibition held by Hunan Provincial Museum is in partnership with Changsha Municipal Museum, Beijing World Art Museum, the Great Manchester Museum Group, the international Touring Exhibitions, UK and the City Council of Bury, UK.
　
The exhibition features 80 works from 18 museums and galleries in Manchester and neighboring cities in northwestern UK, and traces the UK’s artistic quintessence from the mid-18th century to today. It is a systematic study of the development of British art over 300 years.

The exhibition will be displayed in six sections, i.e., Britons, Observing the Scene, The Physical Setting, Telling Stories, Poetic Imaginings, and Modernism. It will take account of the polarities of the avant-garde and an art produced for an establishment, by including works that represent an artistic mainstream and others that demonstrate a rejection of convention. It will include examples of different genres of painting and drawing, from the grand tradition of history and religious subjects, to portraiture and landscape (two of the most familiar staples of British art), to paintings and drawings which will offer glimpses of the actualities of everyday life for Britons of every kind and which form a kind of artistic vernacular.
　
After a widely successful tour in China beginning in November, 2012, the “Towards Modernity: Three Centuries of British Art” exhibition finally comes to Changsha, the last stop of its tour. Since Hunan Provincial Museum is currently under renovation and expansion, the exhibition will be held in Changsha Municipal Museum through October, 7. Admission is free.