On December 13, Ms. Suzanne Fratus of California, USA, donated two Ming Dynasty pottery figurines from China to the Shanghai Museum and officially exhibited them in the lobby on the first floor of the museum.
It is reported that in April this year, the Chinese Consulate General in San Francisco received a postal courier from Ms. Suzanne, which contained two colorful figurines and a letter, which described the family's relationship with the two figurines, expressing the hope that the cultural relics would be returned to the Chinese through the Chinese government and donated to the Shanghai Museum.
The State Administration of Cultural Heritage attaches great importance to it and immediately organizes the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Cultural Relics and the Shanghai Museum to carry out related work such as cultural relics appraisal, judging that these two pottery figurines are Cultural Relics of China, which is more similar to a set of Ming Dynasty colored glazed pottery figurines collected by the Shanghai Museum.
In September, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage respected Ms. Suzanne's wishes and designated the Shanghai Museum as the recipient of the two pottery figurines. With the full cooperation of all parties, the two cultural relics finally entered Shanghai on November 26 and returned to the motherland.
On December 2, in accordance with the requirements of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, the Shanghai Museum organized experts to carry out physical appraisal and confirmed that the two pottery figurines were Ming Dynasty funerary tools, which were precious physical materials for studying the ancient Chinese burial system and pottery history, with important collection value, and were determined to be third-class cultural relics. The two cultural relics are the same as the tire quality of a set of Ming Dynasty pottery figurines in the Shanghai Museum, and the low-temperature lead glaze process applied to the surface, and the shape and production style are very similar to the pointed hat figurines in it, which should be works from the same period and the same region.
It turned out that Ms. Suzanne's grandfather, John Herbert Waite, practiced medicine in China in the early 20th century, and after a patient was cured, she gave him two clay figurines as a token of gratitude, and then her grandfather returned to the United States with this object, and the whole story became an unforgettable mark of her childhood.
In 1983, to celebrate the sistership between Shanghai and San Francisco, the Shanghai Museum held "Treasures of the Shanghai Museum : An Exhibition of 6,000 Years of Chinese Art" at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. Ms. Suzanne found that a set of honor guard figurines exhibited on the exhibition was very similar to the pottery figurines in her collection. The person in charge of the Shanghai Museum told him that the pottery figurines should come from the tombs of Chinese stolen nobles.
Ms. Suzanne admired China's beautiful cultural and artistic achievements and decided to return it to her homeland. "In the 100 years that the two terracotta figurines have separated the land of China, we have witnessed two world wars, countless epidemics, floods and famines," she said. If they could speak, I know they want to tell the world a lot of things: be kind to people, respect each other, help each other. They return home, not because of money or politics, but because of the power of love and respect for Chinese people. ”
It is worth mentioning that the Shanghai Museum has carefully prepared the "Special Exhibition of Colorful Glazed Ceramic Figurines of the Ming Dynasty" for this purpose, and the two donated ceramic figurines will be exhibited together with the Ming Dynasty color glazed ceremony guards in the collection of the Museum in San Francisco that year, and then compose a good story. A total of 68 cultural relics are exhibited in the exhibition, and the exhibition period is one month.
Exhibition Hours:
From now on - 2021.12.26 (closed on Mondays, excluding national holidays)
Exhibition Venue:
The lobby on the first floor of the Shanghai Museum
Reporter / Liu Yi
Edited by / Huang Qianwen
Photo / Zhou Fei
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