The Forbidden City: Inside the Court of China's Emperors - Vancouver Art Gallery

that come from the collections of the Palace Museum in Beijing, including 80 objects that have never been seen in Canada, many of which have rarely been out of Beijing. We're interested in why these objects were in the possession of the emperors. And the emperors owned these objects because they were part of the exercise of power. Back in the 18th century, this was the most important empire in the world. The Forbidden City is the largest palace in the world. It was bigger than Versailles, bigger than Buckingham Palace. It is on 178 acres of land and is comprised of about 980 buildings and courtyards inside what was essentially a walled city. It contained the emperor, of course, he's at the centre of everything. It then contained the women charged with producing an heir. There was one empress, lots of concubines. These women could number in the handful or they could number in the dozens. Officials who come into the Forbidden City to do the business of government had to leave at sunset. And the city was left then to the people who lived there. The emperor was considered the son of heaven. He wasn't literally the son of heaven, but he had heaven's mandate to rule the world. And so his palace therefore had to, in some ways, be the next step below heaven. As you enter the Forbidden City, you would always approach the emperor from the south. And he actually was represented by the North Star. And the colour of the North Star is purple. So when you come into the first galleries, you are washed with this beautiful purple colour on the walls that is the colour that represents the emperor. As you progress through the exhibition, you eventually get to the inner chambers that would only be used by the emperor himself. There would have been many thrones in the Forbidden City, so wherever you would encounter the emperor, he would be seated higher than you on a throne. In everything that he did, with what he wore, with how he was carried in the sedan, and with the objects that he collected, it was really all an expression of power, which was so important to do when you were managing this vast empire. The role of the women was to produce an heir to the throne. That was their sole purpose in the Forbidden City. Here we see some extraordinary robes that they would have been wearing, some of the decorations for their hair. One of the remarkable objects is the empress's vest. On the bottom, you can see the waves that had been sewn into it, and two gold dragons, both of them leading up to the head. It's this apex of power that represents, again, the emperor's place between the celestial gods and the people on earth. The emperors had extraordinary taste. They also had remarkable resources, and they used those well to collect objects that were treasures of Chinese history, Chinese culture, from the jades to the bronzes to the remarkable cloisonné pieces. The objects that were collected were also ones that came from the West, so as visiting dignitaries and missionaries came from many other parts of the world, they would, of course, bring extraordinary gifts to the emperor. And we end the exhibition with a very special ceramic piece where the word longevity has been written 10,000 times. The intention was that the empire would continue on into eternity. This was, of course, not the case. In 1912, the empire came to an end, but this ceramic piece is an extraordinary reminder of the power that the emperors had for many centuries. I suppose the first thing I'd like people to take away with it is a sense of the variety and complexity of the culture that China has inherited today. I think there is not a uniformity to the objects that you will see in the Forbidden City. They're of all colors and shapes and sizes and styles. This was a very rich and constantly renewing culture. Forbidden City is the inaugural exhibition of the Institute of Asian Art that was launched at the Vancouver Art Gallery. It's a fantastic moment for all of us Vancouverites to come and to celebrate the extraordinary richness and vitality of Chinese culture.