Sculpture

This sculptural fragment, representing a woman´s head, was purchased in Nanking Road, Shanghai, one November´s day in 1926. The antique dealer said that this and several similar heads which he had in stock came from a cave in Shaanxi Province, near the border with Gansu Province in Northwest China. Scholars now say that the head belongs to the same tradition as the 12th century sculptures now in the Daoist Temple in Memory of Jin, in Shanxi Province near the city of Taiyuan in Eastern China. This sculptural fragment is typical of the Museum´s collections from historical times in China. the objects are unaccompained by documetnation of their place of origin and comparative scholarly studies are our only possible chance of dating and understanding them.