Six Decades of Acquisition: Chinese Figure Painting Collection Highlights 28 January to 31 March 2014 In order to honour the 60th anniversary of the University Museum and Art Gallery, the museum’s historic Fung Ping Shan Building was renovated and re-installed to display the university’s Chinese art collections. The grade one historic building presents highlights of the museum’s bronzes, woodwork, ceramics, and lacquer objects, and shows temporary exhibitions of Chinese paintings and calligraphy. The museum currently presents a special exhibition of Chinese figure painting, which features a selection of fine examples from the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) to the late 20th century. Figure painting had attained the status of a fully developed genre in China long before landscape or literati painting (wenrenhua 文人畫) was regarded as an independent subject. Despite its long history and the historic precedence enjoyed by figure painting, later Chinese artists and theoreticians generally preferred to place figure painting, in particular, narrative and religious paintings, on a considerably lower artistic level than landscape and literati painting. This condescending attitude toward figure painting prevailed in China from the 17th century until only a few decades ago. This exhibition aims to raise the awareness of the importance of this subject in the history of Chinese art and its impact on the development of Chinese ink paintings.