COLUMBIA -- The Columbia Museum of Art will show, for the first time, a major gift to the museum of Chinese art in the exhibition "Eye to the East: The Turner Collection of Chinese Art." The exhibition opens Friday, Dec. 19, and will be on view through May 10, 2009.

The donation of this collection to the Columbia Museum of Art is significant in that it now gives breadth and context to a growing collection of Korean, Japanese and Chinese art. This constitutes the only public collection of Asian art created for the Asian market in South Carolina.

"Eye to the East" offers visitors a more in-depth understanding of Chinese art and a more complete study of the outstanding gifts of Asian art from Dr. Robert Y. Turner, who has donated more than 100 works to the museum from ancient Roman heads to works by 20th-century modern masters.

Turner's collection is exceptional in that it covers a broad historical span with examples from many periods. The approximately 70 works in the exhibition range from painted ceramics and bronzes of Neolithic times (ca. 8,000 to 2,000 B.C.) to ceramics, vessels, tomb figures and Buddhist sculpture from the Golden Age of China, the Tang dynasty (618 to 907). Works from almost every intervening period -- Han to Sui dynasties, 206 B.C. to A.D. 618, and Jin through Yuan dynasties, 906 to 1368 -- are also included. A highlight of the exhibition is a very rare terracotta figure of the Maitreya -- Buddha of the future -- from the seventh-century Sui/Early Tang Dynasty.

The earliest pieces in the Turner collection are from the Xiajiadian culture that flourished in Northeast China about 2,000 B.C. The people of the time built permanent homes, farmed and raised domesticated animals. The two painted Xiajiadian jars in the Turner collection are excellent examples of their work.

Tomb figures in "Eye to the East" -- guardian figures, chimera and spirited horses from the Han and Wei dynasties (206 B.C. to A.D. 534) -- show the skill of the ceramic craftsmen. Also included are stonewares and porcelains with simple forms and monochromatic glazes from the Song, Jin and Yuan dynasties (906 to 1279, 1115 to 1234 and 1279 to 1368, respectively).

The exhibition is organized by the Columbia Museum of Art and guest curated by Dr. Donald A. Wood, chief curator, The Virginia and William M. Spencer II Curator of Asian Art at The Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Ala.

For more information, call 803-799-2810 or visit www.columbiamuseum.org.

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