In the U.S. we tend to think of pop culture as our thing: a recent, Western phenomenon based in rock music, hip-hop, Hollywood film, and maybe the occasional YA novel. The Smart Museum's exhibit "Performing Images: Opera in Chinese Visual Culture" demonstrates just how parochial that view is.
The show features a dazzling array of materials, from the 1700s to the present, that surround the stories and pageantry of the widely popular form.…
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