China refuses loans for show on Cultural Revolution

The Chinese government has attempted to censor an exhibition about the Cultural Revolution opening next month at New York's Asia Society, The Art Newspaper has learned. The Chinese government has refused to allow museums in China to lend works to what is expected to be the most significant show yet on this subject.

Art and China’s Revolution” (5 September-11 January 2009) surveys three decades of Chinese art following Mao Zedong’s establishment of the republic in 1949, including the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) when the government controlled artist production. Exhibitions of photographs and posters have explored the politics and propaganda of Maoist China, but none has assembled ink and oil paintings, sketchbooks and prints by both underground and official artists, including the “model” paintings on which millions of social-realist posters were based. Historically significant pieces have made their way into Chinese museums where they have languished in storage, but when the Asia Society sought to borrow these long-hidden landmarks, the Ministry of Culture peremptorily refused.

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