Classical Chinese

“For two years, I ferreted through court documents, biographies and local histories, all in classical Chinese, trying to find the patches of historical forest in the midst of dense linguistic trees” on the Oboi Regency, he wrote in 2014 in Perspectives on History, the American Historical Association’s newsmagazine.

On Wednesday, the museum announced that the Kosovo-born artist Petrit Halilaj will take over the museum’s Roof Garden in April with a meditation on conflict; the South Korean sculptor Lee Bul will transform the facade in September with futuristic statues; and the Taiwanese artist Tong Yang-Tze will design two new works of calligraphy featuring classical Chinese texts for the Great Hall in November.

To test Baidu’s claim that Ernie has better Chinese language abilities than GPT-4, we asked the two chatbots to compose a piece of poetry in a classical Chinese form:

Mr. Bao read widely, from classical Chinese texts to Anne Rice’s “The Vampire Chronicles,” his son said.

“Beyond the Mountain: Contemporary Chinese Artists on the Classical Forms” exhibits contemporary works that interpret and examine the traditions of classical Chinese art.