Nice Dragon

The best aspects of China's extraordinarily rich culture and heritage tend to be overshadowed by its dearth of human rights and the touchy marriage of an oppressive regime to its own version of capitalism. The country rolls forward on its own terms, often rattling us here in the United States.

All of which makes the Nelson's Rising Dragon timely and provocative. To comprehend the whole of Chinese art is daunting — it's vast and complex, laden with ritual, dynastic politics and cultural shifts. But the Nelson has compiled 5,000 years of Chinese art into an effective exhibition. This is what the Nelson does best: present beautiful and meaningful historical works of art and artifacts that delight for their sheer artistry and inform through their social meanings.

Tightly curated by the museum's director, Marc Wilson (a China scholar), Rising Dragon is intimate in size but big on bang, playing to what general audiences often love best about museums: ancient exotic objects illuminated and glowing from the darkened backdrop of the mysterious space. The exhibition opens and closes with the dragon, the creature that has come to symbolize China for most of the world. Moving through centuries, the dragon's meanings change with China's shifting social and political realities.

Early Chinese artists depicted the dragon as having transformative powers. For the ancient Chinese, the dragon was the supreme being, representing good fortune, universal peace and prosperity. One of the first pieces here is the bronze "Celestial Dragon as the Life Energy of the Universe," from the Tang Dynasty (618-907). The object likely reminded anyone who saw it of the dragon's magical powers, the positive, life-giving forces that animated all things — the yang.

In between dragons, Wilson has included ritualistic objects and mini­ature items needed in the afterworld. "Architectural Reliquary for Cinerary Remains," from the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279) is a particularly fine celadon ware piece. Intended to hold one's ashes, the tiny "house" is rife with symbols such as a small carp (a lowly fish) that turns into an exalted dragon.

And red-lacquered ware grouped with the rest of the pieces reminds Kansas City that the Nelson has some of the world's finest Asian art. The carved surfaces of "Imperial Cylindrical Brush Holder" and "Incense Box" are unbelievably intricate.

Landing squarely in the material world, the monumental green-and-yellow "Dragon-form Tile Roof Ridge Terminal" that closes the exhibition reminds us that all countries shift and spin off-center through political changes. Here, the dragon, which dates from the relatively modern Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), no longer represents the divine. For many viewers, a dragon is a dragon is a dragon, but materials accompanying the exhibition tell us that by this time, the dragon had been appropriated for political gain. More than 5 feet tall, this folkloric figure, now perched on the corner of a palace rooftop, has morphed into a symbol of political power and prestige borrowed by the emperor to shore up his own image. Still beautiful, though less ethereal, the green-and-yellow dragon seems earthbound in this last, closing punctuation.