The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present for more than six months beginning in February an exhibition of some 90 Chinese paintings, featuring images of ornamental rocks or landscapes inspired by the fantastic forms of such stones, complemented by more than 30 actual scholars' rocks. Drawn primarily from the Museum's holdings, and supplemented by a select number of loans from private collections, The World of Scholars' Rocks: Gardens, Studios, and Paintings</B> – opening at the Metropolitan Museum on February 1, 2000 – will examine the Chinese taste for strangely shaped rocks during the last 1000 years, tracing through pictorial images as well as actual examples the evolution and transformation of the genre from the 11th to the 20th century.
