See 10 Paintings from the Met’s Landmark Chang Dai-Chien Acquisition
ARTnews reports that the Metropolitan Museum of Art has acquired 38 works by Chinese ink painter Chang Dai-chien, spanning studies from his time at the Dunhuang Buddhist cave complex in the 1940s and later works from the 1960s onward that move toward abstraction. Met director Max Hollein called Chang “one of the most important painters of the modern era,” noting his blend of classical Chinese knowledge with a transnational life that included travel across South Asia and later years in Monterey, California. The acquisition is part gift and part purchase from the artist’s daughter, Sing Sheng Chang, supported by multiple patrons; Chang died in 1983 in Taipei at age 83 after leaving mainland China in 1949. The group includes a 1951 self-portrait made in Hong Kong and works such as Approach of the Storm (1967), Swiss Landscape (1966), and Splashed Ink Landscape (1968). Some of the works will be shown later this year, and the acquisition will anchor a Met exhibition on 20th-century Chinese ink painting (guóhuà) scheduled to open in 2028.
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This story was covered in Museum Upheavals, Protest Flashpoints, and Guerrilla Hangings