Beginning tomorrow, January 31, The International Museum of Art and Science invites viewers to watch as Donald Williams, Senior Furniture Conservator Emeritus of the Smithsonian’s Museum Conservation Institute and a crew of IMAS curatorial department spends a couple days assembling the intricate 10,000 Springs Pavilion for IMAS’s next show. The pavilion, made by Chinese artisans to demonstrate traditional Chinese carving and fine furniture techniques, is a model of The Ten Thousand Springs Pavilion (Wan Chun Ting), a celebrated example of classic Chinese architecture, rebuilt in 1533, which still stands in the Forbidden City in Beijing, China.
As a Smithsonian travelling exhibition, the pavilion and its caretakers have logged many a mile across the US, crating and uncrating the intricate structure from its intricate crates, which and admiring blogger at the Headley-Whitney Museum in Lexington, Kentucky likened to a large jigsaw puzzle.
