Blooming gardens reveal centuries, reframe nature | Cultural Exchange | Bernard Charnwut Chan

“Blooming: The Art of Gardens in East and West” at the Hong Kong Museum of Art uses gardens as a lens to examine power, taste, and escape across centuries and cultures.

Bringing together 106 works from four major lenders – the Palace Museum in Beijing, the Palace of Versailles, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the museum’s own collection – the show runs until the end of July. The combination of works allows viewers to envisage how emperors, kings, painters, and ordinary people have imagined their ideal gardens, and what those visions reveal about the societies that produced them.

The exhibition explores Chinese and Western garden traditions to highlight the distinct ideas that shape them.

In the gardens of the Qing court, composition is understated. Paths bend, bridges change course, and rocks appear as natural formations conveying a sense of harmony and quiet restraint.

Versailles gardens present differently. Lines dominate, trees are clipped into formation, fountains align with the geometry of the grounds, and the long avenues carry the gaze back toward Louis XIV. The organization of the space leaves little doubt that authority rests with the king.

Further on, the mood changes. Monet’s scenes of water and shifting light are shown with works by Zhang Daqian and Wen Zhengming. Instead of grand layouts, attention settles on smaller elements: the surface of a pond, the angle of a pine trunk, a courtyard glimpsed through foliage.

The emphasis is less on spectacle than on contemplative observation. Seen this way, the garden – whether in Suzhou or at Giverny – feels less like a showcase of horticulture and more like a retreat: a shaped piece of the natural world in which thought is given room to settle.

Supporting the exhibition are talks on Yuanming Yuan and Versailles, Lingnan garden traditions, and 18th-century plant exchanges, alongside workshops in bonsai, dried flowers, and plant rubbing.

“Blooming: The Art of Gardens in East and West” offers a chance to reflect not only on how gardens were created, but also on how they continue to shape our thinking about space and nature.

Bernard Charnwut Chan is the chairman of the West Kowloon Cultural District

 

𝗗𝗼𝘄𝗻𝗹𝗼𝗮𝗱 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗔𝗽𝗽 ↓