Morning Muse with the Curator
Apr 23, 2026
8:00 am – 9:00 am
Start your day with creativity at Morning Muse, a new program that brings people together for coffee, conversation, and fresh ideas at the Taubman Museum of Art.
Enjoy time to mingle and connect with others before joining Deputy Director of Exhibitions Katie Hirsch for a short talk about a recent addition to the Museum’s Permanent Collection, Modern Time (2005) by renowned artist Hung Liu.
Morning Muse offers a welcoming way to get a creative boost before work, school, or whatever the day holds, while spending time with art and community.
Members: Free | General Public: $5
Not a Member? Join today for benefits such as discounts on classes and camps, exclusive invitations to Members-only events, and free reciprocal admission to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond. Click here to learn more and join today!
About Hung Lui and Modern Time:
Born in Changchun, China, in 1948, Hung Liu’s life unfolded amid the political and cultural upheavals of 20th-century China, including the Cultural Revolution.
Trained in Socialist Realism at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, she immigrated to the United States in 1984 to attend the Master of Fine Arts program at the University of California at San Diego, where she was exposed to conceptual and postmodern practices.
Modern Time reflects this cross-cultural dialogue. Based on a 1960s photograph of a daydreaming cafeteria worker, the painting shows the same woman twice at a long table.
On the right, she sits beneath portraits of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, and Joseph Stalin, evoking the promise of and weight of a socialist utopia.
On the left, she appears beneath portraits by — and in one case of — artist Vincent van Gogh, introducing a contrasting vision of modern life rooted in individuality, emotion, and instability.
Liu does not offer these sides as a simple choice between East and West or politics and art. Instead, she allows them to exist side by side, much as her own life bridged cultures.
The Mao-era clocks remind us that time and history move forward regardless of ideology.
Modern Time was one of nine works censored in a planned 2019 solo exhibition in Beijing, which was ultimately cancelled. This censorship mirrors the work’s questions about power, control, and historical memory, emphasizing Liu’s point that history remains contested and unresolved.
