From Library Journal
This disc is based on an exhibit at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art that featured 475 masterworks from the National Palace Museum, Taipei, and on Wen Fong and James C.Y. Watt's Possessing the Past: Treasures from the National Palace Museum, Taipei (LJ 7/96). It represents masterworks of Chinese art spirited out of China to Taiwan by Chiang Kai-shek in 1949. The images represent the collections of the Chinese emperors from the time of the Sung Dynasty (960) to the Ch'ing (ending in 1911). The disc is arranged chronologically, and each section includes essays placing the works in historical and aesthetic context. There is a marvelous variety of art represented: paintings, carvings, porcelain bowls and vases, incense burners, and more. The database features hypertext links to the glossary, pronunciations of names, technical information about the object and its material, translations of the scripts on the paintings, and brief biographies. Though the images are gorgeous and can be enlarged, objects cannot rotate 360 for full viewing. We would have liked a searchable index with terms for the nonspecialist. The maps of each dynasty are weak and noninteractive and can easily be eliminated. Bottom Line: It is unfortunate that the medium's full possibilities weren't explored in the transfer of this catalog to CD-ROM. Still, this is recommended for art collections.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
