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Xiang Li Traditional Chinese Watercolor
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A Palace Museum master, painting China’s empresses

Xiang Li spent thirty-seven years in the Palace Museum’s copying studio. Since 2010 she has painted 217 empresses across twelve dynasties on silk — a collection made to be exhibited. This page is for curators: the collection, her museum record, and how the studio works with museums.

Contact the studio Her museum record
Xiang Li seated at a table in the MFA Boston’s Shapiro Courtyard beside a long silk painting, with visitors behind
Shapiro Courtyard, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston — Lunar New Year 2025
Black-and-white portrait of Xiang Li seated, arm resting on a chair back
Xiang Li 李湘

Who we are

Trained in the imperial copying tradition

Xiang Li 李湘 entered the Palace Museum in 1974 and was trained by the leading masters of the day as a specialist in its principal copying studio — reproducing and restoring paintings and calligraphy that could not leave the room. Between 1975 and 1985 she painted all 413 characters of Dream of the Red Chamber.

Since 2010 she has painted China’s empresses on real silk, in ground mineral pigment, dynasty by dynasty; the Song scrolls run two to four meters. She has been invited to advise at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the MFA Boston and the University of Michigan Museum of Art. Her daughter, Fei Wu, produces the studio’s museum programs and leads the artist talks, translating for her mother.

37
Years at the Palace Museum
217
Empresses painted on silk
12
Dynasties, Han to Qing
Our full story →

Our longest museum partnerships

Lunar New Year at the MFA and the Worcester Art Museum

Both museums have made the studio part of their Lunar New Year celebrations every year since 2025, and both have booked it again for 2027. At the MFA the silks hung in the Shapiro Courtyard in 2025, when 2,100 visitors came, and about 3,000 came through the 2026 evening festival. Worcester hosts the paintings in its Chapter House, where the visitor clicker passed 800 in 2026. It began in February 2024, at Harvard.

  1. 2027
    • Worcester Art Museum Upcoming · January 31, 2027
    • Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Upcoming · February 7, 2027
  2. 2026
    • Worcester Art Museum February 16, 2026
    • Museum of Fine Arts, Boston February 19, 2026
  3. 2025
    • Worcester Art Museum January 26, 2025
    • Museum of Fine Arts, Boston January 30, 2025
  4. 2024
    • Harvard Museums February 2024
Read about Worcester, 2026 →

For exhibition

The Chinese Empresses

The collection runs dynasty by dynasty, so it can fill a gallery or be shown one period at a time. Each collection page lists every painting.

An empress in pink and violet robes above swirling waves, painted on silk by Xiang Li

Chinese Empresses 中国皇后

217 women across twelve dynasties, Han to Qing — painted since 2010 in ground mineral pigment on silk. The core of any exhibition.
Guanyin in flowing white robes holding a red vase before a full moon, above pink lotuses, painted by Xiang Li

Guanyin 观音

The bodhisattva of compassion, painted again and again among lotuses and moonlight.
The Chinese Empresses hardcover book by Xiang Li on a white table

The book 画册

Chinese Empresses, a full-color hardcover of the collection, works as an exhibition catalogue and a museum-shop title.

Her museum record

Gallery talks, a first partnership, and the Palace Museum

Beyond the Lunar New Year festivals: a talk in the MFA’s Song galleries, Harvard in 2024, the Davis Museum, and the museums of her career in China.

Xiang Li and Fei Wu at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Lunar New Year festival 2026, in front of a large Eastern Jin silk painting

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston · Chinese galleries

A gallery talk among the MFA’s Song paintings

During the 2026 Lunar New Year festival, Fei Wu led a talk inside the MFA’s Chinese galleries, on Song, Yuan and Ming paintings in the museum’s own collection. About ten to fifteen people were expected; eighty to a hundred gathered, and the organizers handed her a speaker so the room could hear. The group then followed her back to the studio’s table for a live demonstration of mineral pigments and raw silk. It is a program we want to repeat.

February 19, 2026

Read the story →
Empress Zhangsun, Empress Wende of the Tang, with a peony and white doves — Chinese watercolor on silk by Xiang Li

Harvard Museums of Science & Culture

The first museum partnership

Harvard’s Chinese New Year evening in February 2024 was the first time a museum showed Xiang Li’s empresses, at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, with Xiang there in person beside her original work.

February 2024 Read the story →

Visitors gathered in a Davis Museum gallery for the Immortalizing Magu conservation program

Davis Museum at Wellesley College

Invited as a silk painting expert

At “Immortalizing Magu”, a program on the year-long conservation of a Ming dynasty painting, Xiang Li was invited and introduced as a silk painting expert, among conservators and curators from the MFA, Harvard Art Museums and Wellesley College.

April 2026 Read the story →

Detail of Xiang Li’s reproduction of a Ming dynasty landscape with pines and pavilions

The Palace Museum, Beijing

A reproduction two years in the making

Xiang Li’s copy of the Ming painter Zhou Chen’s Spring Outing — two years of work in the museum’s copying studio — hung in the Forbidden City’s 2012 exhibition of master artists.

2012 Read the story →

Xiang Li speaking at the opening ceremony of the Dream of the Red Chamber exhibition in Qingdao

National Studies Museum, Qingdao

A museum built around one collection

Her complete Dream of the Red Chamber hung at Beijing’s Grand View Garden for twenty years. The Qingdao museum acquired it and, in 2016, agreed with her to build a research center around it.

2016 – 2018 Read the story →

Working with museums

Exhibitions and programs

From a full gallery exhibition to a single festival day. Fei Wu produces each program and leads the talks, in English and Mandarin.

  1. 01

    A gallery exhibition

    The empresses shown as a whole or one dynasty at a time, on silk, with scrolls up to four meters. The New England Botanic Garden’s four-month show in 2025 drew 66,385 visitors.

  2. 02

    Festival days

    A station of paintings and zodiac designs inside a museum-wide celebration, as at the MFA and the Worcester Art Museum every Lunar New Year since 2025.

  3. 03

    Gallery talks in your collection

    Fei Wu leads a talk among the museum’s own Chinese paintings — at the MFA, Song, Yuan and Ming works — then a hands-on look at mineral pigment and raw silk with Xiang.

  4. 04

    Silk painting expertise

    Xiang has advised at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the MFA Boston and the University of Michigan Museum of Art, and was invited as a silk painting expert to the Davis Museum’s conservation program.

Exhibitions, programs and press

  • Museum of Fine Arts, Boston · February 7, 2027
  • Worcester Art Museum · January 31, 2027
  • Artists Magazine
  • Jean McDonough Arts Center (JMAC)
  • Creative Hub Worcester
  • New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill
  • Fiber Art Now
  • Mary Cosgrove Dolphin Gallery, Worcester State University
  • Kathryn Schultz Gallery, Cambridge Art Association
  • Blackstone Valley Art Association
  • ValleyCAST
  • Harvard Museums
  • Tsingtao Cultural Park and Museums
  • The Forbidden City
Full exhibition history →

Contact

For curators

Xiang Li’s CV, headshots and full exhibition history are below. For a list of available works with dimensions, high-resolution images, or to discuss an exhibition, write to the studio. Fei Wu produces the studio’s museum programs and will answer.

Contact the studio

Fei Wu · Producer and speaker · Xiang Li’s daughter
xiangliart@gmail.com