Splendid Spectacle

Seldom, if ever, had Manhattan's chill Metropolitan Museum employed such warmly seductive tactics. Its exhibition of "Costumes from the Forbidden City" (in Peking) was a three-part combination of Max Reinhardt spectacle, Diaghilev ballet, and Barnum & Bailey side show.

The real shocker was a supine human skeleton, varnished with gleaming gilt paint, dazzlingly berobed and tenderly laid out to impersonate one Kuo Ch'in Wang, a Ch'ing Dynasty prince. After that, it was scarcely surprising to see a ghostly, frozen parade of the glittering imperial robes from the Ch'ing Dynasty courts, 1644 to 1911, which variously seemed to gesture in salute, prayer or mute ritualism. Also displayed were robes of Buddhist and Taoist priests, of devil dancers and court theater performers. So splendid were these vestments that the Metropolitan's Far Eastern Art Curator, Alan Priest, who directed the show, could safely write: "In design, in color, in texture, in execution and conception they are beyond anything else that human beings have ever devised to clothe themselves in."

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