The Long Museum is a private art institution founded by the husband-and-wife collectors Mr. Liu Yiqian and Ms. Wang Wei. It is recognized as one of China’s foremost private museums, home to an expansive collection that spans countries, cultures, and generations. As globally renowned collectors, Liu and Wang have assembled a collection that encompasses traditional and contemporary Chinese art, Chinese revolutionary art, and significant works of contemporary art from across Asia, Europe, and the United States. Their holdings are both comprehensive in scope and exceptional in scale.

The Long Museum is dedicated to exhibitions, research, collecting, and public education. We believe it is our responsibility to help advance the development and legacy of art. Much of our research focuses on the dynamic dialogues between ancient and contemporary art, and between Eastern and Western artistic traditions, highlighting the rich diversity of global artistic expression. Through these efforts, the Museum seeks to showcase the brilliance of Chinese art history while also presenting the fresh perspectives that contemporary Chinese art contributes to the world. These ongoing endeavors have established the Long Museum as a world-class private institution.

10–60 is a major international exhibition, currently running at the Long Museum, that spans both geography and generations. Drawn from my collection of global contemporary art, it presents representative works by nearly five hundred artists born between the 1910s and 1960s, with creation dates ranging from the 1930s to the present. The accompanying catalogue includes close to 500 works – one per artist – while the exhibition brings together nearly 200 selected pieces, collectively outlining a visual history that extends across more than half a century of artistic practice.

The exhibition unfolds in two parts. The first, The Mind of Abstraction, focuses on works that explore color, line, and materiality as independent means of expression. The second,The Journey of Figuration, presents works depicting the human figure, landscape, and scenes of daily life. Through these two parallel yet interwoven threads – abstraction and figuration – the exhibition reflects on how artists, as individuals, have chosen to respond to the tides of transformation that have defined the modern era, particularly since the mid-twentieth century. From the reconstruction and introspection that followed the ruins of war, to the questions and reconfigurations brought forth by globalization, artists have either turned inward to seek the essence of spirit and form, or outward to confront the conditions of body and society. Together, they have shaped the visual consciousness of their age and offered profound meditations on the world we share.

To step into this exhibition is to enter a world of extraordinary vitality and multiplicity – a living tableau of global art in motion. Here, abstraction and figuration are not merely stylistic distinctions, but two enduring philosophical paths toward perceiving reality and expressing existence. Visitors will witness the evolving language of abstraction as it extends across the decades, as well as the persistent renewal of realism, which has never ceased to reinvent itself. Ultimately, 10–60 seeks to reveal how our understanding of the past may illuminate the present – and, perhaps, allow us to see it anew. Curator is the collector Wang Wei.

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