Wu School and the Three Perfections

The Sackler Gallery presents works from the Wu School, a renowned group of Ming dynasty artists with a discussion from curator Stephen Allee.

The Wu School, a renowned group of Ming dynasty Chinese artists, centered on the affluent city of Suzhou and nearby towns. From the 1460s to the 1620s, Suzhou artists excelled in all forms of creative expression, from music to drama, cuisine to garden design. They were most admired by contemporaries for their poetry, calligraphy, and painting—the Three Perfections—which were regarded as the ultimate expressions of literati culture.

In the galleries of Painting with Words: Gentleman Artists of the Ming Dynasty, Stephen Allee, associate curator for Chinese painting and calligraphy, discusses the connections among these complementary art forms.