Author Description

"The exhibition and catalog, Rediscovered Treasures, features approximately sixty art works selected from the Cincinnati Art Museum's East Asian Art collection divided into three sections: Rediscovery, New Identity, and Conservation. Each of these art works tells an interesting story of how it was rediscovered through advanced scholarship or conservation. The exhibition also highlights how the East Asian Art Department epitomizes the two key institutional missions of the art museum: preservation and interpretation of cultural objects. CAM acquired the core of its Asian art collection in the late nineteenth century when Cincinnati was a flourishing cultural center in the Midwest. However, as many of these works entered the museum they were left unidentified, wrongly identified, or sometimes not even accessioned for lack of information at the time. Over the past two decades, new research addressing these challenges led to many exciting discoveries of not only new information about the artworks themselves, but also how their history and provenance shed new light on the early and consequential relationship between Cincinnati and Asia"-- Provided by publisher.