Honor Your Ancestors Today

I am rather busy and have fallen a little behind on my reading and pondering for the blog. As an alternative, I thought I would make note of some interesting art.

Today is the celebration of the Qingming Festival for China/Hong Kong/Taiwan and ethnic Chinese in other countries. It is essentially a festival honoring the dead and is also known as Ancestors Day and Tomb Sweeping Day. The festival also marks a transition into Spring: the spring plowing starts, couples start courting, green tea harvested before today fetches a higher price, etc.

There is a famous panoramic painting by 12th century (Song Dynasty) artist, Zhang Zeduan, Along the River During the Qingming Festival measuring 9¾ in by 17 ft 4 in. If that link isn’t working you can view it on the Wikipedia page, though the aforementioned link is much more beautiful.

For the 2010 Shanghai Expo, the China Pavilion featured wall sized animated versions which showed the figures in the painting moving about their day. Cleverly done and quite interesting to watch.

I like this one best

Another version. Animation is more detailed, but covers less ground

h/t Hidden Harmonies China blog

About Joe Patti

I have been writing Butts in the Seats (BitS) on topics of arts and cultural administration since 2004 (yikes!). Given the ever evolving concerns facing the sector, I have yet to exhaust the available subject matter. In addition to BitS, I am a founding contributor to the ArtsHacker (artshacker.com) website where I focus on topics related to boards, law, governance, policy and practice.

I am also an evangelist for the effort to Build Public Will For Arts and Culture being helmed by Arts Midwest and the Metropolitan Group. (http://www.creatingconnection.org/about/)

My most recent role was as Executive Director of the Grand Opera House in Macon, GA.

Among the things I am most proud are having produced an opera in the Hawaiian language and a dance drama about Hawaii's snow goddess Poli'ahu while working as a Theater Manager in Hawaii. Though there are many more highlights than there is space here to list.

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