The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Cleveland Museum of Art Jointly Acquire Important Chinese Prints

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Episode Transcript

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Each institution receives more than 118th century Suzhou
prints, transforming their collections and expanding
scholarship on Chinese printmaking.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Cleveland Museum of Art
announced today that they have jointly acquired a large group
of exceptional 18th century Chinese color prints from

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Suzhou. Each institution receives more
than 100 prints, complementing their strongholdings of Chinese
paintings and expanding scholarship on Chinese
printmaking. The Sujo prints, named for the
city in which they were largely produced, were assembled by
Christa von der Berg, who holds the most comprehensive

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collection of Sujo prints in private hands.
The acquisition of these prints places the CMA and the Met among
the top destinations for the study of Sujo prints in the
world. We are excited to collaborate
with the Cleveland Museum of Artto acquire this extraordinary
set of Sujo prints, said Max Holland, the Met S Marina

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Kellen, French director and chief executive officer.
These vibrant works, which blendimagery from China S elite
painting tradition and vernacular art with techniques
derived from European engravings, highlight the
ongoing dialogue between peoplesand societies, offering a rare
opportunity to deepen our understanding of the
cosmopolitan nature of Chinese visual culture.

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We are delighted to work with our colleagues at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art on this unique acquisition, which
allows our two institutions the rare opportunity to bring these
outstanding prints to an American audience in the context
of our respective Chinese collections, said William M
Griswold, Sarah S and Alexander M Cutler, director of the

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Cleveland Museum of Art. China is known for its invention
of woodblock printing in the 700's and as a pioneer in color
printing with separate blocks inthe early 1600 ESSA technique
that was developed well before it spread to Japan.
Color printing in China reached its peak around the 1700s, with

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the finest examples created in Suzhou preserved as wall
decorations in Europe or in Japanese collections.
Very few of these prints have survived in China.
Curators from the Met and the CMA worked collaboratively to
divide the collection in an equitable fashion, ensuring that
both museums would have adequaterepresentation across type and

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style, while also confirming that coherent sets of prints
remain together. This acquisition is
transformative for the ClevelandMuseum of Art S collection, said
Clarissa von Spi, the Cmas Jamesand Donna Reed Curator of
Chinese art, interim curator of Islamic art and chair of Asian
art. These prints allow the museum to

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address China's invention of printing centuries before the
accomplishments of Johannes Gutenberg and highlight the
innovation of color printing with multiple blocks.
They are a meaningful complementto our strongholdings in Chinese
painting. Joseph Shater Dahlberg, Oscar
Tang and Agnes Hsu Tan, curator of Chinese paintings at the Met,

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said Suzhou Prince epitomized the intercultural communication
that enlivened the early modern world.
These 18th century artworks drewfreely on visual traditions,
both local and imported, and they became popular not only in
China but also in Japan and Europe in the 1700s.

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In this way, Sujo Prince provides some of the most vivid
evidence we have of our interconnected past.
The Prince entering the collections of the CMA and the
Met depicted A diverse range of subjects, including birds and
flowers, antiquities, architectural schemes, gardens,
historic sites, and elite women.Closely associated with and

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often imitating paintings, the prints have narrative and
architectural details that bringfresh insights, new attention,
and a fuller understanding of the two institutions.
Collections of Chinese painting prints from this acquisition
will go on view at the CMA in winter 2026 in the James and
Hannah Bartlett Prints and Drawings Galleries, allowing

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visitors to contextualize Chinese innovations in woodblock
prints alongside other contemporaneous works on paper
at the Met. Select works from the collection
will go on view this fall as part of the exhibition.
Chinese painting and calligraphyselections from the collection.
November 22nd, 2025 to May 31st,2026.

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About the Collection Nearly all the prints from the collection
date to the 18th century, and many are large in scale.
Typical sizes 40 X 20 inches. Many prints are polychrome, some
as the result of multicolor woodblock printing processes
pioneered in China, while otherswere hand colored at the time of

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creation after initial impressions in multiple tones of
ink, following the practice of Chinese painting, many of the
prints have inscriptions in the form of poems and artists
signatures. The Sujo prints feature a range
of subjects and genres, including architectural views,
cityscapes, elite women, birds and flowers, New Year S prints,

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games and more. The collection contains prime
examples in all major categories.
One of the most remarkable aspects of Sujo Prints is their
extensive use of European visualconventions, especially linear
perspective and hatching, to indicate light and volume.
While European pictures had beencirculating in China for

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centuries, by the time Sujo Prince began to flourish in the
1730s and 40s, their impact had been confined largely to the
imperial court and to subtle adaptations in certain local
painting traditions. With the rise of Sujo Prince,
these conventions burst into thevisual landscape of middle and

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upper middle class homes, reflecting a Chinese visual
culture that was more cosmopolitan and globally
interconnected than has heretofore been appreciated.
The many striking examples of European visual techniques in
these prints will allow both museums to make this point with
vivid examples drawn from the lives of everyday Chinese people

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of the 18th century. About the Metropolitan Museum of
Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870 by a
group of American citizens, businessmen and financiers, as
well as leading artists and thinkers of the day who wanted
to create a museum to bring art and art education to the
American people. Today.

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The Met displays 10s of thousands of objects covering
5000 years of art from around the world for everyone to
experience and enjoy. The museum lives in two iconic
sites in New York City, the Met 5th Ave. and the Met Cloisters.
Millions of people also take part in the Met experience
online. Since its founding, the Met has

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always aspired to be more than atreasury of rare and beautiful
objects. Every day, art comes alive in
the museum S galleries and through its exhibitions, events,
and educational programs, revealing both new ideas and
unexpected connections across time and across cultures.
The Met presents over 29,000 educational events and programs

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throughout the year to make art accessible to everyone,
regardless of background, disability, age, or experience.
About the Cleveland Museum of Art The Cleveland Museum of Art
is renowned for the quality and breadth of its collection, which
includes more than 63,000 artworks and spans 6000 years of

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achievement in the arts. The Museum is a significant
international forum for exhibitions, scholarship and
performing arts and is a leader in digital innovations.
One of the top comprehensive artmuseums in the nation,
Recognized for its award-winningOpen Access program and free of
charge to all, the Cleveland Museum of Art is located in the

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University Circle neighborhood. The museum is supported in part
by residents of Cuyahoga County through a public grant from
Cuyahoga Arts and Culture and made possible in part by the
Ohio Arts Council OAC, which receives support from the State
of Ohio and the National Endowment for the Arts.
The OAC is a state agency that funds and supports quality arts

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experiences to strengthen Ohio communities culturally,
educationally and economically. For more information about the
museum and its holdings, programs and events, call
888-CMA0033 or visit cma.org.