West Meets East

May 21 - Sep 4 2016 - The exhibition of books from The Mint Museum Library ‘s collection influenced, inspired, and documented the impact of Chinese culture on Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Translated into multiple languages, each title was a bestseller of its day, enabled by advances in printing, and an increasingly literate and leisured populace with a fierce desire for information about the exotic.
 
Today, these titles are quite rare and the Mint is one of the few cultural institutions in the South to have them all.  Very significant to the history of decorative arts, these volumes are hidden treasures until now, their first time on public view.