So, what's with all those animals in Chinese paintings, anyway?
If you've ever wondered about that, a new exhibit coming to the Cincinnati Art Museum will help you figure it all out.
The exhibit is called, appropriately enough, “Roaring Tigers, Leaping Carp: Decoding the Symbolic Language of Chinese Animal Painting.”
The exhibit runs from October 9 2009 through January 3, 2010.
The exhibit will feature more than 100 Chinese paintings and objects, some of them more than 500 years old.
Visitors will learn that animals can represent emperors, forces of nature, even heavenly beings with supernatural powers.
Sometimes, how the animal is posed has meaning.
The exhibit will include pieces from the Cincinnati Art Museum's permanent collection.
Some of the works also come from the National Palace Museum in Taipei, Taiwan, the Palace Museum in Beijing and the Shanghai Museum.
This is the first time many of these works have been displayed in the U.S.
