Power/Play: China's Empress Dowager

This exhibition provides a compelling and immersive exploration of the Empress Dowager Cixi through 35 glass-plate negatives, two original prints presented to President Theodore Roosevelt and his daughter in 1904 and 1905, and film clips. The Empress—the supreme leader of China for more than 45 years—was held in low regard throughout the world following China's disastrous Boxer Rebellion. Devising a strategy in 1903 to rehabilitate her public image, she allowed a young aristocratic photographer named Xunling to take staged shots of her and her court. These photos, the only photographic series of Cixi, represent a unique convergence of Qing court pictorial traditions, modern photographic techniques, and Western standards. The 35 glass-plate negatives—acquired by the Freer from the photographer's sister, Princess Der Ling—are the only intimate portraits of the Grand Empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908) held outside of the Palace Museum in Beijing.