Highlights of the Annual Report - The Ashmolean Museum

Exhibitions / 19
The Four Seasons
21 January - 25 May 2003
This exhibition was an introduction to the skills and meaning of Chinese
landscape painting. The four seasons in ancient China were related to the
lunar calendar and represented the cycle of life: from birth (Spring) to death
(Winter). Even the colours have significance: light green usually represents
Spring, blue Summer, yellow or orange Autumn and black and white Winter.
The exhibition was selected by Shelagh Vainker and Dr James Lin and drew
on works from the Museum’s own extensive Chinese collections.
Roman Gold from Finstock
3 February - 31 December 2003
A most important Roman coin, unearthed in Oxfordshire over 150 years ago
and which was brought into the Ashmolean last September for identification,
was the subject of a small exhibition entitled Roman Gold From Finstock,
which attracted notice in the national Press, and on local television and radio.
This unique coin is a gold ‘aureus’ of c. AD 70 in the name of the Roman
emperor Vespasian.
Gibbons (detail) by Chen Wenxi
Contemporary Prints
19 February – 23 March 2003
Two sets of prints from the artists Hughie
O’Donoghue and Georg Baselitz were
displayed for the first time in the
Museum. The nine carborundum prints
by O’Donoghue were donated to the
Museum by the artist in memory of Ilaria
Bignamini and were inspired by a large
painting, The Wrestlers, which was also on
display. The series by Georg Baselitz A
Fascist Flew Past is considered to be one of
the most important series made by the
artist in the past twenty years.
Spectacular Impressions: Old Master
Prints from the Ashmolean Museum
16 April - 14 September 2003
The Museum holds one of the most
important print collections in the world
but it is seldom possible to show more
than a handful at a time. This summer
represented a major departure with an
exhibition of eighty works from the
collection from the 15th- to the 18thcenturies
and included works by
Mantegna, Dürer, Rembrandt and
Watteau.
A Fascist Flew Past III by
Georg Baselitz