Visitors attending the exhibition's opening on July 31 listen as a museum guide introduces the history and artistic significance of the Dazu Rock Carvings. [Photo/Memor Museum]
"Stone can speak, if we are willing to listen," Willa Ao said on Friday evening, standing under the warm spotlight of an Upper East Side townhouse. "More than a thousand years ago, people carved stories into stone. Today, those stories have traveled from Chongqing, Southwest China, to New York to begin a new conversation with all of us."
Ao, director and curator of the Memor Museum, was welcoming guests to the official launch of Harmonious East: Art and Life Narrative of the World Heritage Dazu Rock Carvings.
The exhibition, co-organized with the Dazu Rock Carvings Research Academy, marks the first overseas presentation of the Dazu Rock Carvings since the site was inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List in 1999.
Set inside a wood-paneled building in the Metropolitan Museum Historic District, the show skips heavy stone slabs in favor of high-precision replicas, digital projections and contemporary artwork. The effect feels surprisingly personal — as if pieces of a remote hillside in southwestern China had settled quietly into a Manhattan living room.
