Dresden Drawings Return to China for Exhibition

Five hundred drawings from the collection of the Museum of Ethnology in Dresden are returning to their origin in Ningbo, China, for a temporary exhibition. The Ningbo Museum in China's Zhejiang province will present these works, known as "export paintings," until November 1.

These colorful brush drawings offer a rare glimpse into 19th-century daily life in Ningbo, documenting aspects of trade, labor, and customs. Many of these depictions are scarce in China today. The collection features selections from 50 volumes originally owned by Paul Georg von Möllendorff, a German who resided in Ningbo from 1847 to 1901. His daughter gifted a portion to the Dresden museum, with the remainder being purchased.

The exhibition, titled "Insight and Resonance: Scenes of Eastern Life in Export Paintings from Ningbo in the 19th Century," is part of a cooperative initiative launched last year between the Dresden State Art Collections (SKD) and its partners in Ningbo. This collaboration also involves the digitization and cataloging of the albums.

Bernd Ebert, General Director of SKD, will attend the exhibition's opening. He plans to sign a cooperation agreement with the Palace Museum in Beijing afterward. Ebert stated that presenting the Dresden collection in Ningbo provides an opportunity for the SKD to "give something back to Chinese society that is lost locally and represents an important cultural-historical source."

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The presentation of the Dresden collection in Ningbo offers the SKD the opportunity to give something back to Chinese society that is lost locally and represents an important cultural-historical source.