Welcome to The Muban Educational Trust

The Muban Educational Trust (MET) was established in 1997 by Christer von der Burg and the late Verena Bolinder-Müller. It is a small charity based in south-west London and is dedicated to the preservation, research and promotion of Chinese woodblock printmaking. It has an extensive collection of over 6,000 modern and contemporary Chinese woodblock prints which are available for research to scholars, curators, collectors and artists, by arrangement with the Trust.

The MET is managed by Haiyao Zheng, David Barker and Anne Farrer, three individuals with broad interests in the field supported and advised by a board of Trustees.

The MET has been working closely with Chinese artists. The first ambitious project was the commissioning of a Portfolio of woodblock prints from sixty contemporary Chinese artists in 1997. This Portfolio was published in 2003. It coincided with the exhibition Chinese Printmaking Today at The British Library, which displayed prints entirely from the Muban Collection.

Since then, the MET has curated and presented many exhibitions. Its activities have made a real contribution to Chinese woodblock printmaking, providing a doorway to collectors, galleries, exhibitions and collaborative ventures for Chinese artists. 

In recent years, the primary mission of the MET has been to discover, encourage and promote young Chinese artists and to provide an international platform to showcase their most innovative work. Since the establishment of the Muban Awards in 2014, the Trust has held five competitions.  A second Portfolio Regeneration, a collection of prints by eighteen young Chinese artists, was commissioned from leading artists taking part in the Muban Awards.

The MET’s most recent major exhibition Lu Xun’s Legacy: Printmaking in Modern China was shown at the Oriental Museum of University of Durham, the Brunei Gallery of SOAS, University of London, and the Museum of East Asian Art in Bath between 2001 and 2023.