Melania Trump and China’s first lady Peng Liyuan toured Chinese artworks and a room shaped by Asian design at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art in Washington on Thursday, as their husbands held talks at the White House.
The museum’s director, Chase Robinson, said the two women spent about 45 minutes there and were “full of questions”. Much of the visit centred on the Peacock Room, whose displays of Chinese porcelain made it a fitting setting for the occasion, he said.
“What better place to introduce the two first ladies to our museum on the occasion of high-level conversations and discussions between our two countries?” Robinson told the South China Morning Post.
The museum, more than a century old and sitting on the National Mall, is one of the country’s leading institutions for Asian art and holds tens of thousands of works spanning cultures across Asia.
The two first ladies spent much of the tour focused on the iconic Peacock Room, Robinson said.
Created by American artist James McNeill Whistler in 1876-77, the room combines blue, green and gold decoration inspired in part by Chinese porcelain and Japanese design. American collector Charles Lang Freer bought the room in 1904 and had it moved from London to the United States. It has been a centrepiece of the Washington museum since 1923.
The tour also included an 18th-century Chinese porcelain vase decorated with colourful famille rose enamels, gold and iron red, as well as a Yuan dynasty scroll painting.
Robinson said the museum has an exceptionally strong collection of Yuan and early Ming paintings, which were one reason for showing the work.
He said both Peng and Trump enjoyed the visit. “I think they were both intrigued by the scale of 19th-century interaction between China and the United States,” Robinson said.
The tour ended with a performance by students from Hope Chinese School, a Chinese immersion school.
Why was this museum chosen for such an occasion?
The office of the US first lady selected the venue, Robinson said, but the museum also has longstanding ties with China.
Robinson recently returned from a trip to China, where he visited Xian, Dunhuang and Beijing. The museum has partnerships with the Palace Museum and other Chinese institutions and regularly sends staff to China. It also works closely with the Chinese embassy in Washington and the US State Department.
“Given those kinds of relationships, given the opportunity to celebrate US-China relations, this was an appropriate place,” Robinson said.
The museum also has an active programme of Chinese cultural events. Its Lunar New Year celebration, for example, draws as many as 15,000 to 16,000 people in a single afternoon.
After Xi Jinping and former US President Joe Biden visited Filoli in California during Xi’s 2023 US trip, the historic estate drew renewed public attention. Robinson said he hoped the first ladies’ visit would have a similar effect.
“We don’t doubt that there will be opportunities to celebrate their visit,” he said. “I hope [it will] inspire many more visits.” -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
