The Rent Collection Courtyard: Fifty Years
The Changing Exhibition Galleries: South Gallery
September 26, 2014 through February 22, 2015
2015 marks the 50th anniversary of the revolutionary landmark Chinese installation work, The Rent Collection Courtyard. In 1965, a group of sculptors from the Sichuan Institute of Fine Arts created 114 life-size clay figures depicting starving peasant farmers bringing their rent to a tyrannical feudal landlord’s residence, a trenchant Communist critique of practices of serfdom and servitude in imperial China. After the groundbreaking installation at a landlord’s former residence in China, the figures were reproduced in a unique maquette (scale model) which belongs to USC Pacific Asia Museum.
The Rent Collection Courtyard: Fifty Years will recreate the original installation paired with a critical essay on the works and their legacy in setting the stage for later waves of Chinese contemporary art.