• Out of Town

Modern writings often describe Chinese scholars’ gardens as sites of aesthetic reclusion—spaces filled with architecture, waterways, and rockeries intended to facilitate the garden-owner’s retreat from the mundane world. Plants rarely appear in such accounts, except as culturally sanctioned signifiers of the garden-owner’s character or virtue. A look at paintings and books that depict gardens from the Song to Qing dynasties offers a different view: plants were central to these gardens, for practical purposes and for contemplating humanity’s place within the cosmos. This talk will explore these themes through a discussion of the exhibition Growing and Knowing in the Gardens of China, displayed at The Huntington in fall 2024.