See Red In A New Light: Imperial China Meets Mark Rothko In D.C. Exhibition

"This holiday season, the color red is the focus of a small exhibition at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington, D.C. The Smithsonian show finds links between a 15th-century Ming dynasty dish and a 20th-century painting by Mark Rothko."

"The dish was made for an emperor in 1430, and it's rare — there are only about 35 of them left. It has simple lines and a rich color (red, of course). Curator Jan Stuart fell in love with the dish and set about adding it to her gallery's collection. She showed it to experts, the gallery's board and members of the National Commission of Fine Arts. According to Stuart, several had the same reaction: 'Oh, I get it. It's like Rothko.'"

"The gallery bought the dish, and a concept was born: Put it on view with a luminous Mark Rothko painting — one that layers tones of red into two vertical rectangles — borrowed from the National Gallery of Art. The result is a mini-show brought together by color."

"The Ming dish is the color of crushed raspberries. To get that hue, imperial potters mixed a tiny amount of finely ground copper oxide into their glaze. Back then, getting the right red was tricky: too much copper and you get a liver color; too little and it totally disappears in the firing. "It is the single hardest color to control in the kiln," Stuart says."