Once in Tatters, Magu Returns to Greatness

Ming Dynasty painting is painstakingly restored and now on view

The paths through Wellesley College were lined with bare trees and piles of snow, still not fully melted. It was early March, and this reporter was making her way around the campus, looking for the Davis Museum. For a historically significant women’s college known as the “cradle of the First Lady” — Soong May-ling, Hillary Clinton, and writer Bing Xin all attended the school — the place felt quiet that day.

Once this reporter had finally entered the museum, she made her way to a dimly lit, small exhibition hall. And then, there it was: A large ancient painting was hanging in the center, causing the reporter to involuntarily hold her breath — a goddess dressed in a straw raincoat, holding medicinal herbs, her expression serene, her gaze distant. She is the Goddess Ma Gu.

From Storage to Spotlight

The “rediscovery” of this painting began in autumn 2022.

“In August 2022, I just had started working here, and the first thing I did was to conduct a comprehensive survey of the collection of Asian art,” Dr. Yuhua Ding, the curator responsible for planning this exhibition, recalled. “I was immediately interested in a collection named ‘The Goddess Gathering Herbs,’ labeled as Song Dynasty.”

When the registrar took out this painting from the storage room, however, the condition of the painting was heart-wrenching — it could not even be hung on the wall, but had to be spread out on a large table for examination. The painting was covered with crisscrossing cracks, the colors were dim, and the outlines of the figures were almost unrecognizable. You can see the photo I took at the time: The entire painting is very damaged, full of cracks, and even the face of the person is damaged.”

After microscopic photography and silk identification, the team found three different ages of silk on the painting, deducing that before this restoration, the painting had at least undergone two re-mountings, making it an ancient artifact that has withstood the test of time.

One year later, the Davis Museum decided to launch a restoration project and hired the renowned Boston-area Chinese painting and calligraphy restorer Jing Gao to lead the work. On Feb. 6 of this year, after about a year of restoration and multiple waits, the ancient painting finally appeared with a new look in the exhibition hall. This is the “The Immortal Magu: A Sixteenth-Century Chinese Painting Up Close,” which is currently on display until May 24.

Chinese calligraphy and painting restorer Jing Gao stands in front of the Ma Gu painting. Photo by Wenqi Cao.

Three Parts Painting, Seven Parts Mounting

The guides for the reporter were Dr. Ding and Gao. It is worth mentioning that this was also Gao’s first time seeing his restored work officially displayed in the exhibition hall. At that moment, he stood quietly in front of the painting, gazing at it for a long time.

The light in the exhibition hall was deliberately dimmed to protect the ancient silk paintings from light damage — Dr. Ding told the reporter that the painting is only lit during the public opening hours each day, and is usually kept off, “just to prevent it from being affected by light.”

The entire wall on the right side of the exhibition hall was one of the most astonishing parts of this exhibition: all the materials used in the restoration process — layer upon layer of paper, silk, and dye samples — were displayed here. Viewers could not only see with their eyes but also touch with their hands, feeling the texture and thickness of different materials. A small iPad screen was placed beside the display, silently playing photos and videos of Gao’s restoration process, as if bringing people into the daily work scene facing the ancient painting.

Gao said something that left the reporter deeply impressed: “Three parts painting, seven parts mounting.” Mounting is not auxiliary, but vital.

The reason why, he said, Chinese ancient paintings have been able to survive for thousands of years is that generation after generation of restorers have continuously “given them new clothes” — removing the brittle backing paper, pasting new support paper, so that the painting core can extend its lifespan. “If not mounted, after a few hundred years, it would become brittle and rotten itself,” he said, “so each time we strip and mount, we replace it with new paper, giving it a new support behind it.”

Restoring Against the Clock

This repair took over a year, the steps were more complicated and time-consuming than most people could imagine.

Gao broke down the entire process into several key steps, each requiring extreme focus and patience.

Removing the backing was the most dangerous part. “The painting itself was already weak, and you don’t know how strong the back paper is,” he said. “Some back papers take a month to peel off. We don’t want it to dry out, because once it dries, it’s harder to peel, so we need to keep it moist.” But there are risks with moisture— “You have to peel the back paper quickly, within two or three minutes, because if it takes too long and the humidity is high, it’s prone to mold.”

Stretching on the drying board was the most tense part. When the painting core was moist, it was stuck onto a large board, and as it dried and shrank, it produced strong tension, “Some boards would even bend,” Gao said, “The entire picture would become very tight.”

Color restoration was the most eye-straining part. “Some colors are very dark and heavy. You need to clean them, and after cleaning, you need to reapply the color,” he said. Dr. Ding added, “I see that Mr. Gao’s eyes were very tired, he kept staring at the painting.”

To make the restored painting more stable, the painting on the board needed to “stretch on the drying board” and wait for several months, allowing the paper and silk to repeatedly contract and expand with temperature and humidity changes until the materials become stable. This long wait is hard to understand for western curators accustomed to a fast pace.

“Many Western art curators can’t understand why we have to wait for several months,” Dr. Ding humorously commented, “They say, ‘Oh, it looks good, no need for (further) restoration.’”

And Gao's response was concise and forceful: “They don’t know that ‘stretch on the drying board’ requires waiting for several months.” As Dr. Ding said: “I think Chinese (style) mounting requires patience.”

Magu Across the Millennia

The completed painting is of great significance from the perspective of art history.

Dr. Ding named this painting “The Image of Ma Gu,” which is based on years of research into image studies. Ma Gu is the longevity goddess in traditional Chinese Taoism, whose image evolved from the fierce bird god of the Neolithic Age, through the Taoist transformation of the Han Dynasty, the beautification of the Ming Dynasty, to the “Ma Gu Offering Longevity” pattern alongside the Queen Mother of the West (Xiwangmu) in the Qing Dynasty. This painting from around the sixteenth century is at a key juncture in the transformation of the image of Ma Gu from “Taoist fairy” to “auspicious longevity” imagery.

When this painting was first acquired, the label read “Song Dynasty Yan Deqian’s ‘Fairy Gathering Herbs’”. After research, Dr. Ding confirmed that it is neither from the Song Dynasty nor painted by Yan Deqian, but rather a painting of Ma Gu by an anonymous painter from the Ming Dynasty. The old label has been completely preserved in the exhibition hall as teaching material for students to refer to—as Dr. Ding said, “This kind of material, professors can bring it out and take a look together when teaching.”

Lifting a Veil of Mystery

The exhibition, which opened in February, has attracted a large number of visitors, especially Chinese families with children coming on weekends.

“Many people are very interested in Chinese painting, but Chinese painting itself is very mysterious,” Dr. Ding said, “For people living in the Chinese-speaking world, truly understanding this aspect of their own culture is like lifting a veil of mystery.”

She emphasized that the core concept of this exhibition is to let the viewers see the process behind the “finished product”: “The process of creation or conservation is equally important. The scene behind the art is very, very important.” Gao supplemented this from the perspective of cultural heritage: “The paintings that have been passed down for thousands of years are still here today because of their repeated mounting and restoration, which is why they have been preserved to this day.”

Interestingly, the exhibition also retained the “mending silk” traces left by the historical restoration of the paintings, and did not replace them with new silk — this was a decision made together by Dr. Ding and Gao for educational purposes. “Ancient paintings cannot be without repair marks,” Dr. Ding said, “The original brushstrokes were more fluent, and the later added brushstrokes were more awkward, but this painting embodies many ‘hands’, many touches. I think it is meaningful for teaching, to let everyone think about how to view an ancient painting, what is truly valuable.” Dr. Ding emphasized: “I think a perfect finished product is not necessarily the best; instead, the process with educational significance is the most important.”

Pause. Look. Reflect.

The visit is nearing its end, as Dr. Ding leads the reporter through every detail she designed by hand in the exhibition hall—the bilingual poem, the touchable material wall, and the looped restoration videos on the iPad. With each point of clever design she mentions, pride and satisfaction are evident on her face.

This exhibition is the one that has consumed the most of her efforts since she joined in 2022. When asked what she hopes the audience takes away, her answer is unexpectedly simple: “I just hope that people can pause here, sit down, look around, and think about it for a while. Whatever they see or learn is meaningful. What’s most important is that they feel it and incorporate their own thoughts.” The Ma Gu stands silently in the painting, having endured for thousands of years without a word. And perhaps her story is quietly being continued in the hearts of everyone who pauses to gaze.