Mountains of the Mind: A Chinese Landscape Journey

At the top of Wang Jian's 1668 scroll, the painter wrote his own caption: numberless clouds around the mountains, no one coming or going, a thatched door open to green peaks. Below, on over seven feet of paper, two men sit alone, one in a thatched house by a rough bridge, the other in a cottage hidden behind rocks.

It is one of just over 20 ink landscapes, old and contemporary, in the second-floor Chinese galleries. The museum frames them through Daoist mountain worship: rivers are a mountain's veins, mist its breath, rocks its bones. You read Wang's scroll from the zigzag of water at the bottom, up through thin streams, into bare paper that stands for cloud. Mist as a mountain's breath, in the one city that gave its fog a name.

It closes on 26 October. Entry is included with general admission ($20, free for 12 and under), and the museum is open until 8 PM on Thursdays.