DgcityThe Hong Kong Palace Museum opened a major new thematic exhibition on Wednesday, inviting visitors to follow the Qing-dynasty court through a full cycle of the year. “Qing Court in Four Seasons: Life and Culture of the Imperial Household” brings together 187 treasures from the Palace Museum in Beijing and occupies the museum’s largest gallery, the same space that previously hosted its acclaimed show about a single day in the Forbidden City. This time, the curators stretch the clock from 24 hours to 12 months.
The show is organised around the rhythm of court life. Spring centers on agriculture and sericulture, with leaves from the album Pictures of Tilling and Weaving rotated six at a time; the future Yongzheng Emperor appears in the paintings as a farmer, accompanied by his own inscribed poems. Summer features a new-media installation by artist Jeffrey Shaw that carries the emperor north from the Yuanmingyuan to the mountain resort at Chengde, the projections shifting from daylight to night along the journey.
Autumn and winter turn to ritual. Visitors can examine astronomical instruments, including an armillary sphere shown only during the first six months, and try an interactive calligraphy station that traces the emperor’s brush as he writes the character fu and lunar new year couplets in the twelfth month. A vase decorated with the flowers of all twelve months evokes the spring Flower Festival, when the court honoured flower deities and prayed for good harvests.
The gallery design takes its cue from the Qing-era Complete Library of the Four Treasuries, whose four categories were colour-coded. Verdant green marks spring, vermilion summer, moon-white autumn and charcoal-grey winter, so walking the exhibition feels like moving through the calendar itself. Selected objects will rotate every three months to give returning visitors a fresh view of each season.
The exhibition is the Hong Kong Palace Museum’s deepest dive yet into how the imperial household ordered its year, and why that ordering mattered far beyond the palace walls. The calendar issued from the court set the tempo of rituals, farming and festivals across Qing society. By pairing scrolls and ceramics with astronomy and immersive media, the show makes that disciplined, ceremonial world feel close rather than remote.
“Qing Court in Four Seasons” is now on view in Gallery 2, accessible with a general admission ticket. A rare painting, The Yongzheng Emperor Offering a Sacrifice at the Altar of Agriculture, will join the display in the first quarter of 2027, giving audiences another reason to return as the seasons turn.
