Style Edit: Poly MGM Museum’s ‘Silk Roads Beyond Borders’ adds European masterpieces

In addition, the museum announced an upcoming exhibition set to debut in the fourth quarter of the year, “Confluence in Glass: East-West Artistry Across Time”, presented in collaboration with the National Museum of China and Shandong’s Zibo Ceramic and Glass Museum. It will feature more than 180 works tracing three millennia of Chinese Zibo glassmaking craftsmanship.

“Visitors will encounter carefully considered juxtapositions where Eastern and Western glass pieces are placed side-by-side, revealing both contrasts in aesthetic language and shared mastery of technique,” Kuok explains.

Poly MGM’s ongoing “Silk Roads Beyond Borders” exhibition, which opened in October 2025, will also expand with the addition of a Persian Farahan carpet from the Museu Medeiros e Almeida in Lisbon, as well as 18th century works by Venetian School masters Giovanni Antonio Canal, better known as Canaletto, and Michele Marieschi, both on loan from The Paolo and Carolina Zani Foundation of Art and Culture in Brescia, Italy, with support from the Consulate General of Italy.

They capture Venice – a key European gateway for Silk Road goods – at the height of its mercantile power. Displayed alongside Chinese silk and porcelain, these works show how aesthetics travelled. “These works remind us that cultural exchange was never abstract,” Kuok says. “It was lived and felt across cities like Venice and the other Silk Road regions represented in our exhibition.”