Courtesy Wheaton Arts
BUTLER, Pa. — At the Maridon Museum in Butler, visitors can see the art of a culture thousands of miles away.
Opened in 2004, the museum focuses specifically on Chinese and Japanese art and culture. The museum building and its collections are the gift of a local woman who lived her entire life in Butler and collected more than 800 pieces of art.
The museum showcases a variety of jade and ivory sculptures, tapestries, landscape paintings, scrolls and other artifacts, some dating back to the second and third millennia B.C.
Another highlight is six large-scale paper scrolls painted by contemporary Chinese artist Wan Qingli in 2002.
Many visitors enjoy seeing some of the 300 pieces of Meissen porcelain in the collection. Many of them date back to the early 18th century; one piece belonged to Augustus the Strong, a Saxon official of the period who is credited as the “founding father” of Meissen porcelain.
