Carved in stone, alive in Manhattan: ancient Chinese cave art speaks to modern New York

"Stone can speak, if we are willing to listen," Willa Ao said on Friday evening, standing under the warm spotlight of an Upper East Side townhouse. "More than a thousand years ago, people carved stories into stone. Today, those stories have traveled from Chongqing, Southwest China, to New York to begin a new conversation with all of us."

Ao, director and curator of the Memor Museum, was welcoming guests to the official launch of Harmonious East: Art and Life Narrative of the World Heritage Dazu Rock Carvings.

The exhibition, co-organized with the Dazu Rock Carvings Research Academy, marks the first overseas presentation of the Dazu Rock Carvings since the site was inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List in 1999.

Set inside a wood-paneled building in the Metropolitan Museum Historic District, the show skips heavy stone slabs in favor of high-precision replicas, digital projections and contemporary artwork. The effect feels surprisingly personal — as if pieces of a remote hillside in southwestern China had settled quietly into a Manhattan living room.

Beyond Imperial Grandeur

Chiseled into steep rock faces between the 9th and 13th centuries, the Dazu site in Chongqing holds more than 50,000 statues and over 100,000 Chinese characters forming inscriptions and epigraphs. Yet it feels fundamentally different from northern grottoes like Dunhuang or Yungang.

While those earlier northern caves were commissioned by imperial courts to showcase austere, towering deities, Dazu was built largely by local magistrates, monks and everyday families. As a result, the art shifts away from distant grandeur toward domestic life: mothers nursing infants, herdsmen tending oxen and scenes depicting the delicate balance of daily ethics.

In a video message sent from Chongqing, Xiong Zihua, head of the Dazu research academy, called the site the last great peak of Chinese cave art. He pointed to its guiding ethos — "carving into mountains and seeking the new" — as something that easily bridges Eastern and Western cultures.

Ancient Psychology on the Upper East Side

In a quiet corner near the front gallery, a reproduction of a Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279) panel titled Tethering the Six Senses drew a small crowd of local art patrons. The relief depicts the future buddha Maitreya holding a monkey, a traditional metaphor for the restless mind, while a dog, crow, snake, wildcat, fish and horse sit tethered beneath his seat, each representing one of the six senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, touch and thought.

The display's ancient approach to human psychology caught the attention of George Vanderploeg, an executive in real estate and finance and a board member of The School of American Ballet at Lincoln Center. A longtime patron of New York cultural institutions, including the Met, MoMA, the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Ballet and the Frick Collection, Vanderploeg found himself reflecting on the sculpture's inner discipline.

Modern city life, he said, constantly bombards our physical senses. Traditional wisdom, by contrast, speaks of deeper internal faculties. The monks and artisans who carved these rocks understood that human life is transient while the spirit endures, choosing stone precisely for its permanence to convey those spiritual reflections.

For Vanderploeg, the exhibit's focus on daily scenes, such as the Tableau of Parents' Deep Grace, showing parental care from birth to old age, touched on a universal human truth. "Living mindfully and taking care of your family or neighbors with love is itself a spiritual act," he said. "Everything in daily life can be a form of prayer."

Steel, Stone and Modern Form

That conversation across mediums was echoed by David M. Hayes, president of the David Hayes Art Foundation and son of the noted American modernist sculptor David Hayes.

"Great art speaks directly to spirituality, family and nature," Hayes said. "My father worked in steel rather than stone, shaping organic forms he saw in the outdoors. But a great line is a great line. Using form to express deep human feeling — that's a universal language."

Hayes described the exhibition as a gift to New York, noting how struck he was by the quiet dialogue between ancient Chinese carving and modern American sculpture.

Moving Stories Without Moving Stone

Since the original rock faces cannot leave the slopes of Chongqing, the exhibition relies on photogrammetry, high-definition video and contemporary art, including photographs by Zeng Han, to evoke the site's atmosphere.

"The Dazu carvings cannot travel, but their stories can," Ao, the director and curator of the Memor Museum, said. "Digital technology lets this heritage travel without moving a single stone. History shouldn't just be locked away — it should inspire artists today."

The exhibition runs at the Memor Museum through Aug 30 before moving on to a planned tour of the western United States.