The special exhibition Prosperous Suzhou, jointly organized by the Liaoning Provincial Museum and the Suzhou Museum, will be held at the West Hall of the Suzhou Museum from July 11 to October 11. This grand exhibition will bring together exquisite calligraphy and painting works from the Tang and Song dynasties to the Ming and Qing dynasties, showcasing a total of 62 pieces/sets of precious cultural relics. Of these, 49 pieces are on loan from the Liaoning Provincial Museum’s collection, accounting for over 70%, which demonstrates the rich strength of the Liaoning Provincial Museum’s collection, and presents the unique pattern of “Liaoning’s collection holding up half the exhibits, and cultural heritage connecting the north and south”.

This special exhibition will center on the Liaoning Provincial Museum’s masterpiece painting, Prosperous Suzhou, which has returned to Suzhou, Jiangsu Province once again after 20 years. The exhibition will offer an in-depth interpretation of the cultural roots and historical significance of Suzhou’s prosperity from an art history perspective. It is divided into five sections, including “Masterpieces of Cursive Script Masters”, “Elegance of Wu-School Paintings”, “Qing Dynasty Literati Paintings”, “Suzhou-Style Calligraphy and Painting Replicas”, and “Documentary Genre Paintings”. These sections will fully showcase the unique charm of Suzhou’s millennia-old art and folk life culture.

The whole exhibition will feature the Liaoning Provincial Museum’s collection of calligraphy and painting works, including numerous national treasure-level masterpieces. Among them, Zhang Xu’s Four Poems in Cursive Script from the Tang Dynasty, a masterwork of this great cursive script master, will be on display for a limited time of 45 days, serving as a highlight for the opening of the exhibition. Other highlights include a wide variety of exquisite works from the museum, such as Wu-school painting masterpieces from the Ming and Qing dynasties, as well as renowned Qing Dynasty literati paintings, covering works by masters such as Shen Zhou, Wen Zhengming, Tang Yin, and Qiu Ying. Furthermore, the museum’s precious Suzhou-style calligraphy and painting replicas from the Ming and Qing dynasties and genre paintings also greatly enrich the exhibition’s scope.

Compared to the 13 exhibits from the Suzhou Museum, the Liaoning Provincial Museum’s vast collection of exquisite artifacts provides a solid foundation for the exhibition, achieving a deep complementarity between the collections of the north and south. The “return” of Prosperous Suzhou not only presents a cross-regional itinerant exhibition of the national treasure, but also offers a vivid example of cultural exchanges between Liaoning and Jiangsu provinces.