逾200件中国非遗艺术品一次慢慢看 - 2016年04月01日

TRADITIONAL Chinese arts and crafts are displayed at an ongoing exhibition of intangible cultural heritage. The exhibition will run until April 15 at the BigArt Museum Shanghai.
More than 200 artistic items of embroidery, porcelain, traditional costumes, furniture, painting, modeling, stone and wood carving are put on exhibit. All of them have been included on the country's or the city's list of intangible cultural heritage.
A live auction will be held at 1pm on April 24 with 115 items. One of the highlights of the auction is expected to be a stone tea pot created by artist Liu Entong. A hand-carved frog adorns the cabbage-shaped pot, which has a reserve price of 220,000 yuan (US$33,900).
On exhibition weekends, lectures and interactive workshops will be hosted for children and teenagers.
Visitors can watch live embroidery, dough modeling and fabric weaving. Inheritors will talk about the origin and development of traditional musical instrument, silk painting and wood carving crafts.
“Some of the arts are endangered these days due to a lack of apprentices,” says Gao Chunming, deputy director of Shanghai Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection Center, an organizer of the event. “The exhibition will also gather experts from all over the country to discuss the future of preservation on these arts.”
Woolen needlepoint tapestry, as Gao mentioned, is one of the city's endangered arts. With its clear images and rich colors, the art is also known as “the Eastern oil painting.”
“A large woolen embroidery work usually takes 2 to 3 years to make,” Gao says. “But since the art is more appropriate to depict figures and leaders, the market is now shrinking. Very few young people are willing to take up this low-income career.”
Gao and his team plan to financially aid the art’s inheritance and promote it at Shanghai Art and Design Academy, where the art can find more potential students.
Some arts in Shanghai have already been developed into cultural by-products, such as exquisite gift packages of Double Ninth Cake, Jinshan Farmer Painting and Chinese tea. Folk artists have been invited to create comics about the items' background and characteristics.
Recently a law on intangible cultural heritage protection has been passed in the city and it will be put into practice starting May 1.
Enterprises, groups and individuals will be encouraged to get engaged in the protection.
A total of 55 items of Shanghai have been included on China's state-level list of intangible cultural heritage and the number of the city-level items has reached 220, covering traditional opera, literature, music, painting, medicine, textiles, folk arts and handicraft.
Officials reveal that valuable sequences of the cultures and arts will be videotaped and conserved in a database in the future. Classes and curriculums of some items will also be widely promoted to local primary and middle schools.
Date: Through April 15, 10am-5pm
Tel: 5302-2888
Venue: Big Art Museum Shanghai
Address: 1218 Zhongshan Rd S.