Bowers Reopening Will Include Chinese ‘Masterpieces’ : Art: Collection of Imperial works and three other exhibits will be on view at remodeled Santa Ana museum beginning Oct. 15.

“Masterpieces of the Chang Foundation, Taipei”--one of four exhibits that will reopen the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art on Oct. 15--will include 55 pieces of pottery and ceramics spanning 3,000 years of Chinese history, from the Neolithic era to the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912). According to the exhibit catalogue, released Wednesday at a museum banquet, the show also will include 36 scroll paintings by three seminal 20th-Century artists: Wu Changshuo, Qi Baishi and Fu Baoshi.

The Chang Foundation was established by the Horng Shii Group, a Chang family conglomerate involved in automobile manufacturing and land development. Patriarch Chang Tien-ken, now in his late 70s, began his art collection at age 9. His four sons--including Horng Shii Group Chairman Chang Hsu-cheng, who favors art from the Yuan, Ming and Ching dynasties--are also passionate collectors.

The foundation was organized to promote the study of Chinese art and to re-acquire--through purchase at auction and from private collectors--Imperial works that have become scattered over the centuries in other countries. Last year the foundation opened its own museum in Taipei, home of the famous National Palace Museum, with which the Chang Foundation Museum is not connected.

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The exhibit has traveled to Japan, Korea and the Rockefeller Center in New York. After the Santa Ana showing closes Dec. 31, the works will be seen in Germany and Singapore, according to Liao Kuei-ying, the foundation museum’s assistant curator. She attended the Chinese banquet Wednesday night in Fullerton to honor the efforts of the Bowers’ Chinese Cultural Arts Council, headed by Louise Kuo; board of governors member May Hsu, and other members of the Southern California Chinese community who have supported the exhibit.

The other exhibits marking the Bowers’ post-renovation opening are: “Tribute to the Gods: Treasures of the Gold Museum” (organized with the Museo del Oro in Bogota, Colombia): “Realm of the Ancestors: Arts of Oceania” and “Power and Creation: Africa Beyond the Nile.”