DALLAS, TEXAS.- The Dallas Museum of Art presents what is considered to be one of the most important and historical art exhibitions from China to tour the United States, Splendors of China’s Forbidden City: The Glorious Reign of Emperor Qianlong, which closes May 29, 2005.

As one of only two U.S. venues for this landmark show, the Dallas Museum of Art will bring more than 400 national treasures and artifacts from 18th-century imperial China to the Southwest. Splendors of China’s Forbidden City offers a dramatic examination of the reign of Emperor Qianlong. Most of the included artifacts have never been exhibited in the United States prior to the exhibition’s U.S. debut, and the great majority of the objects have never left the Forbidden City Palace Museum in Beijing.

Emperor Qianlong (“cheeyen-loong”) ruled for sixty years (1736–1795), during China’s last imperial dynasty, the Qing dynasty. His reign was longer than any other emperor in Chinese history apart from his grandfather, Kangxi. The emperor is best known to art historians as a collector who amassed the largest collection of art known up to that point in China. His passion for collecting extended to paintings, porcelain, bronzes, jades, writing implements, and rare books. Qianlong is credited with pacifying the warring territories of western China, fostering innovation in the arts, and commissioning a comprehensive edition of all existing Chinese literature.

The 10,000-square-foot Splendors of China’s Forbidden City exhibition will feature a series of carefully crafted environments based on actual palace settings. Visitors can view the elaborate gold-lacquered Dragon Throne from which the emperor ruled; the desk where he worked, the table where he dined, and the private chamber of one of the emperor’s wives. Objects on view never before seen outside China include the emperor’s funeral throne and spirit tablet, a monolithic carved jade boulder, the five-foot high gold stupa commissioned by Qianlong to commemorate his mother, and eight paintings by the great Jesuit court artist Giuseppe Castiglione, including portraits of Qianlong and his first wife and empress, Xiaoxian.

The exhibition also explores the private world of Qianlong and will include artifacts reflecting his refined taste, including beautiful jade carvings he commissioned and the essays he wrote about them; a selection of the 10,000 snuff bottles he collected; lacquerware and ceramics demonstrating a variety of innovative techniques, which he encouraged; examples of his own calligraphy work; and some of the more than 44,000 poems he wrote.