"Giuseppe Castiglione – Lang Shining New Media Art Exhibition" combines analog and digital technologies to present the masterpieces of Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-1766), an Italian Jesuit missionary who became a highly influential painter at the imperial court of the Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong Emperors.
This exhibition results from a unique collaboration between City University of Hong Kong and the National Palace Museum, representing a milestone in cultural exchange between Taiwan and Hong Kong.
The exhibition's innovative design combines historical artworks, new media and contemporary interactive art to create a compelling, multi-sensory, visitor experience. Full-size facsimiles of Castiglione's paintings, famous for their merging of Eastern and Western styles, are presented side by side with creative, digital interpretations of these works. The result is a fascinating meeting of traditional and contemporary models of representation.
The presence of Jesuits such as Castiglione, both in Beijing and in other major Chinese cities, resulted in new artistic practices and in a sharing of Eastern and Western philosophical, scientific, and artistic knowledge. In the "Castiglione in Context" section, the exhibition makes visible, through porcelains, prints, paintings, and publications, the intellectual and artistic exchanges occurring between European Jesuit missionaries and the late Ming and Qing courts from the seventeenth through to the twentieth centuries.
The exhibition's engaging and stimulating synthesis of historical works, media art and cutting-edge technology represents a benchmark for public museum experiences in the new digital era.