Exhibition Dates: June 27, 2026–January 3, 2027
Location: The Met Fifth Avenue, Douglas Dillon Galleries, Galleries 210-216
(New York, June 27, 2026)—Throughout Chinese history, the city of Nanjing served as the capital of multiple dynasties. Each time a dynasty was overthrown, it left behind another layer of cultural memory, creating an atmosphere in which artists found themselves surrounded by the past. Opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on June 27, City of Memory: Nanjing in the Seventeenth Century introduces the city of Nanjing with a focus on the 17th century, a period of great artistic ferment. Through a selection of over 100 works drawn mostly from The Met collection, the exhibition explores the art scenes that preceded and followed the cataclysmic change of dynasty with a particular focus on Nanjing’s role as a locus of historical and cultural memory, seeking to understand how the artists of that city understood their relation to their hometown and its many historical accretions.
The exhibition is made possible by the Joseph Hotung Fund.
Artworks donated to The Met by Julia and John Curtis have inspired and enriched this exhibition.
City of Memory: Nanjing in the Seventeenth Century explores how artists lived and worked in this charged environment in the decades before and after the fall of the Ming dynasty. The exhibition illuminates both the city’s lore and history as well as the evolution of Nanjing painting from the 1640s to the 1680s. Highlights include albums of landscape painting by the city’s leading artists, Zhang Feng (1644), Hu Yukun (1660), and Gao Cen (1682), along with a uniquely important album of calligraphy by Zhou Lianggong, the Nanjing scholar-critic who documented the art scene of his day. Two rare and important works of calligraphy by Wang Duo, an elite scholar-official and celebrated calligrapher, are on loan from the collection of Akiko Yamazaki and Jerry Yang. In addition, Peter Paul Rubens’s Portrait of Nicolas Trigault (MMA 1999.222), a Jesuit missionary who lived in Nanjing during the early 17th century, will be on view through August 2026 in a section that explores the work of Chinese painters who engaged with European imagery.
Credits and Related Content
City of Memory: Nanjing in the Seventeenth Century is curated by Joseph Scheier-Dolberg, the Oscar Tang and Agnes Hsu-Tang Curator of Chinese Paintings in the Department of Asian Art.
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June 27, 2026