Asian Art Calendar of Events

Tuesday, June 09, 2026

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Mandala Lab
Place: The Rubin Museum of Art - New York, 150 West 17th St., USA
Date: Oct 01, 2021 to Oct 30, 2027
Detail: An Interactive Space for Social, Emotional, and Ethical Learning

The Mandala Lab, located on the Museum’s remodeled third floor, invites curiosity about our emotions. Consider how complex feelings show up in your everyday life and imagine how you might have the power to transform them.
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Knotted Clay: Raku Ceramics and Tea
Place: Smithsonian Institution - Washington, 1050 Independence Ave. SW, USA
Date: Dec 09, 2023 to Dec 09, 2026
Detail: Japan’s rich history of ceramic artistry developed in large part alongside the culture of drinking tea. The practice of preparing and serving matcha, powdered green tea, was called chanoyu (literally, “hot water for tea”) and gained popularity in the sixteenth century. Japanese tea practitioners initially used Chinese and Korean antique ceramics as tea bowls but began using newly made Japanese tea bowls, such as Raku ware, in the sixteenth century. Raku ware shares its name with the family that has made these ceramics in Kyoto since the sixteenth century. Unlike most tea bowls, Raku ceramics are built by hand—a process described as “knotting clay”—as opposed to using a wheel. Sixteenth-century potters are said to have collaborated closely with their tea-practitioner patrons to create distinctive vessels best-suited for tea drinking.

Over the next four centuries, a network of Japanese potters incorporated Raku techniques into their practice; these techniques were later adopted in the 1950s by the American studio pottery movement. Raku wares are now internationally recognized as a Japanese ceramic style and continue to inspire artistic creativity worldwide. Knotted Clay: Raku Ceramics and Tea explores these distinctive, hand-molded ceramics and their close relationship to Japanese tea culture. This exhibition features tea bowls, water containers, and other vessels in the museum’s permanent collection that demonstrate the glazes and forms unique to Raku ware.
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Do Ho Suh: Public Figures
Place: National Museum of Asian Art | Freer Plaza - Washington, 1050 Independence Ave. SW, USA
Date: Apr 27, 2024 to Apr 29, 2029
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Samurai Spirit: Swords, Accessories, and Paintings
Place: San Antonio Museum of Art - San Antonio, 200 West Jones Avenue, Texas, USA
Date: Jan 06, 2025 to Jan 03, 2027
Detail: January 6, 2024 – January 3, 2027
Asian Special Exhibitions Gallery, 2nd Floor West

Learn about the Japanese samurai and their appreciation of finely honed skills in forging and polishing steel to make weapons of lethal beauty.

First recounted by oral narratives, the stories of battles, heroic pursuits, and famous samurai warriors became popular subjects of literature, theater, and pictorial arts that have endured through the ages. And their swords, polished and decorated, were revered as treasured emblems of their honorable heritage.

This exhibit features two important fourteenth century swords, a wakizashi, a short sword signed by the maker, Yoshioka Ishimonji Sukehide, dated to July, 1363, and a katana, a longer sword typically wielded with two hands, that were purchased with funds realized from the sale of the late Robert Clemons’s bequest to SAMA. Japanese swords are admired for the strength of the steel, which comes from heating and folding the metal many times, and by shaping the steel to a fine, sharp blade.

Other samurai weapons and objects round out this introduction to a major aspect of traditional Japanese culture.

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Realms of the Dharma: Buddhist Art Across Asia
Place: LACMA, Resnick Pavilion - Los Angeles, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., USA
Date: May 11, 2025 to Jul 12, 2026
Detail: Realms of the Dharma: Buddhist Art Across Asia presents an international survey of Buddhism and Buddhist art, beginning with the religion’s origins in India and following its spread through mainland and island Southeast Asia (Myanmar [Burma], Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Indonesia), the Himalayas (Kashmir, Nepal, and Tibet), and East Asia (China, Korea, and Japan). Incorporating 180 masterpieces of pan-Asian Buddhist art, the exhibition introduces key concepts of Buddhist thought and practice viewed through the prism of rare and extraordinarily beautiful Buddhist sculptures, paintings, and ritual objects.
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Risham Syed: Destiny Fractured
Place: The Newark Museum - Newarj, 49 Washington St., New Jersey, USA
Date: May 16, 2025 to Mar 07, 2027
Detail: The sixth artist to develop an exhibition of works based on The Newark Museum of Art’s collection, Risham Syed addresses colonialism, capitalism, and climate change.

Some of the inspirational artworks from the NMOA collection include American landscapes, Chinese scroll paintings, and the period rooms in The Ballantine House. The artist has created new artworks for the exhibition that will be presented alongside her previous installations and NMOA collection objects in the Global Contemporary galleries as well as in the landscape gallery in Seeing America. Syed has produced art in a variety of mediums, including videos, embroidered silk panels, installations with paintings and objects, and printed textiles.
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Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room
Place: The Brooklyn Museum - Brooklyn, 200 Eastern Parkway, New York, USA
Date: Jun 11, 2025 to Apr 19, 2031
Detail: Since its debut in 2013, the Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room has been one of the Rubin Museum’s most popular installations, providing an immersive experience inspired by a traditional shrine. Now the Shrine Room travels to Brooklyn where it is on view for six years in the Brooklyn Museum’s Arts of Asia galleries as part of a multiyear collaboration.

The Rubin Museum Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room presents more than 100 artworks and ritual objects as they would be displayed in an elaborate Tibetan Buddhist household shrine—a space used for devotional prayer, offerings, and rituals. Scroll paintings (thangkas), sculptures, ritual implements, and musical instruments dating from the 12th to 21st century are arranged on traditional Tibetan furniture according to their use in Tibetan Buddhist practices. Chanted prayers by monks and nuns, flickering butter lamps, and the subtle smell of incense reflect the cultural practices and remind visitors that Buddhist rituals engage all of the senses. The design incorporates elements of Tibetan architecture and the color schemes of traditional Tibetan homes, offering visitors the opportunity to experience Tibetan religious art in its cultural context.
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Fuse Box: Sarah Sze
Place: Denver Art Museum - Denver, 100 W 14th Ave. Pkwy., Colorado, USA
Date: Jul 13, 2025 to Jul 31, 2026
Detail: Fuse Box is a project space dedicated to the presentation of significant new media artworks created by artists recognized for their pioneering practices in film, video, sound, animation, and computer programming, including gaming, internet art, virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, machine learning, and other nascent technologies.
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About a Living Culture
Place: Diversity Plaza - New York, Jackson Heights, USA
Date: Sep 06, 2025 to Sep 13, 2026
Detail: On September 6 the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art, in partnership with the New York City Department of Transportation Art Program, NYC DOT Art, will unveil a new temporary public art installation by Nepalese artist IMAGINE (a.k.a. Sneha Shrestha) in Diversity Plaza in Jackson Heights, Queens. For her first public art sculpture, IMAGINE has created a six-foot-tall installation in the shape of a golden arch made of repeating rows of ‘Ka,’ the first letter of the Nepali alphabet. Titled About a Living Culture, the artwork is a celebration of the artist’s Nepalese heritage and inspired by the diverse Himalayan cultures of the neighborhood.

IMAGINE, who is from Nepal and currently works in Boston and Kathmandu, creates sculptures, paintings, and public murals around the world that often incorporate her native language and blend the aesthetics of Sanskrit scriptures with graffiti art. Her distinctive style accentuates the Devanagari script—used to write languages such as Nepali, Sanskrit, and Hindi—creating meditative artworks that transform spaces.
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Animal Power
Place: Harvard Art Museums - Cambridge, 32 Quincy Street, Massachusetts, USA
Date: Oct 22, 2025 to Oct 21, 2026
Detail: This is an exploration of the diverse range of animal representations in a recent installation in our Islamic and South Asian art galleries, including their symbolic meanings and cultural significance. On view in the Islamic art gallery (2550) are a 16th-century Persian carpet depicting hunting animals, a selection of ceramic and metal sculptural objects, often serving functional purposes, from 13th- and 19th-century Iran, and contemporary glass birds by Turkish artist Felekşan Onar. The display in the South Asian art gallery (2590) includes a devotional painting showing animal mounts of Hindu deities, 18th-19th century, a textile featuring Hindu mythical animals in an ogival lattice design from the Islamic world, c. 1700, and a Gujarati embroidery with rainbow-colored birds, 15th century.
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Toshiko Takaezu: Dialogues in Clay
Place: Princeton University Art Museum - Princeton, New Jersey, USA
Date: Oct 31, 2025 to Jul 05, 2026
Detail: Toshiko Takaezu: Dialogues in Clay presents the work of the groundbreaking ceramic artist Toshiko Takaezu (1922–2011), who taught at Princeton University for almost three decades.

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Word in Flower: Arts of Buddhism
Place: Portland Art Museum - Portland, 1219 SW Park Ave, USA
Date: Nov 20, 2025 to Nov 20, 2026
Detail: This exhibition highlights the Museum’s small collection of Buddhist art, most of which originates from East Asia. Featuring sculpture, calligraphy, painting, photography, and more, the exhibition explores diverse expressions of Buddhist visual culture in this region from the 6th to 21st centuries. Some of the Museum’s rarest works of sacred art, such as precious sutra fragments and representations of the Buddha and bodhisattvas, are joined by secular works on Buddhist themes from the twentieth century and recent work by living artists.

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Kenji Nakahashi: Between Things
Place: Portland Art Museum - Portland, 1219 SW Park Ave, Oregon, USA
Date: Nov 20, 2025 to Nov 20, 2026
Detail: Japanese photographer Kenji Nakahashi (1947–2017) moved to New York City in 1973, finding in the city the creative inspiration that would sustain his practice for the rest of his life. Both playful and profound, his conceptual approach to photography posed questions about everyday objects, materials, and surfaces. From the mundane, his images raise meaningful questions about the distance or difference between things, and about the relationship between parts of a whole. Alongside Nakahashi’s photographs, a selection of tea bowls by contemporary Japanese ceramicists invites viewers to consider Nakahashi’s questions in another, very different medium. All works featured in this exhibition are new acquisitions, on view for the first time.

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MAKERS: The Culture of Craft
Place: Portland Art Museum - Portland, 1219 SW Park Ave, Oregon, USA
Date: Nov 20, 2025 to Nov 20, 2026
Detail: Makers illuminates the virtuosity of maker and material in Japan. Looking across time periods, this exhibition explores the porous boundaries between art, craft, design, and labor. Works on display range from Bizen pottery to lacquerware, hanging scroll paintings to bamboo sculpture, and metalwork that straddles the line between craft and fine art. These works invite consideration of materials and technique, as well as questions of identity and mastery—the named artist and the anonymous craftsperson—as well as function and aesthetics, and the emotional power of superbly crafted objects. Featuring many new acquisitions on view for the first time, the exhibition also nods to Portland’s own maker culture, which has long made the city a destination for creatives.

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Cloud Dream of the Nine: Stories of a Painting
Place: Portland Art Museum - Portland, 1219 SW Park Ave, Oregon, USA
Date: Nov 20, 2025 to Nov 20, 2026
Detail: This exhibition focuses on a newly conserved Korean screen painting of Guunmong, or The Cloud Dream of the Nine, a popular late seventeenth-century novel. One of the best extant examples of this subject, the screen has undergone full-scale conservation treatment in Korea, restoring it to its original appearance. The exhibition explores the various stories this object has to tell: from the painting’s lively narrative to the story of how it came to the Museum, and the discoveries made through the conservation process. Ceramics and furnishings from the Joseon period (1392–1910) provide context for the setting in which genre paintings of this type may have been displayed and enjoyed in the nineteenth century. Made possible by a generous grant from the Overseas Korean Cultural Heritage Foundation, the exhibition highlights the Portland Art Museum’s international collaboration with scholars and conservators in Korea.

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Heaven and Earth: Chinese Art from the Collections
Place: Portland Art Museum - Portland, 1219 SW Park Ave, Oregon, USA
Date: Nov 20, 2025 to Nov 20, 2026
Detail: Heaven and Earth spotlights powerful works of art in the Museum’s collections, spanning creative practices in China across several millennia. Historic objects and more recent works are brought into conversation, offering different perspectives on how we make meaning of the world and the diversity and creativity of Chinese artists and makers. Highlights include the Museum’s Han dynasty money tree, made of delicately filigreed bronze branches and leaves, and the Warring States period antlered tomb guardian (Zhenmushou), unique to the Chu culture. Among the highlights of more recent work by living artists is the monumental ink painting Heaven and Earth, by contemporary artist Hung Hsien, from which the exhibition takes its title. A rare, fine-line landscape by Shen Zhou (1427–1509), one of the most famous painters of the Ming dynasty, will be displayed in sections, allowing viewers to experience this exceptional, ambitious handscroll in its entirety over successive rotations.

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Hiroshige’s 100 Views of Edo x Emily Allchurch
Place: Minneapolis Institute of Art - Minneapolis, 2400 Third Avenue South, USA
Date: Dec 20, 2025 to Aug 23, 2026
Detail: Mary Griggs Burke Gallery of Japanese Art and Louis W. Hill Gallery (238 and 239)

Utagawa Hiroshige’s (1797–1858) iconic landscape series “One Hundred Famous Views of Edo” (modern-day Tokyo), first published in the 1850s, stands as one of the most celebrated collections of Japanese prints. Individual prints from this series of 118 are widely regarded as some of the finest achievements in Japanese art. Hiroshige captures locations in and around Edo during all four seasons, often from unique perspectives.

Inspired by Hiroshige’s compositions, British artist Emily Allchurch (born 1974) created “Tokyo Story” using digital collage and photography. Allchurch traveled to Tokyo in 2009 and visited places pictured by Hiroshige. While many places have changed radically and bear no resemblance to Hiroshige’s images, Allchurch photographed details of the urban landscapes she encountered through various angles and focuses.

Following Hiroshige’s compositional arrangements, dramatic cropping, and color gradations, Allchurch also manipulated details of the photographic data to create views that are at once familiar and strangely fresh. This exhibition connects the past and the present by featuring Hiroshige’s captivating sceneries along with Allchurch’s modern adaptations.

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Qiu Zhijie: Map of the History of Science and Technology
Place: Olympic Sculpture Park - Seattle, 2901 Western Avenue, Washington, USA
Date: Jan 28, 2026 to Jan 31, 2029
Detail: For the Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park, the artist designed a Map of the History of Science and Technology. In this project, Qiu interweaves scientific and technical advancements in Asia and the West from ancient to contemporary times. The map calls out the discovery of bronze and iron, the invention of the wheel, the abacus and mathematical and scientific theorems, the plow, celadon ware, Roman cement, paper making, feats of engineering across the globe, as well as the bicycle, photography, acupuncture, the flush toilet, and more. The map traces the interconnectedness of ideas that have shaped the course of history across the globe. Born in 1969 in Zhangzhou, Fujian Province, China, Qiu Zhijie is a leading figure in conceptual art and new media. Trained in traditional calligraphy, he is celebrated for imaginary maps in which he turns milestone developments in philosophy, sociology, art, culture, and science into topographic equivalents of a memory palace. Initially creating works small in scale, he gradually adapted the format to large-scale wall installations. Graduating from the Department of Printmaking at the Zhejiang Academy of Arts (now China Academy of Art), Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, in 1992, Qiu was instrumental in developing the school’s Department of Intermedia Arts. Since 2024, Qiu has served as the President of the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts. He is also Professor of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing; and Professor of the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou.

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Mythical Creatures: The Stories We Carry
Place: USC Pacific Asia Museum - Pasadena, 46 North Los Robles Avenue, California, USA
Date: Feb 14, 2026 to Sep 06, 2026
Detail: A major exhibition that transforms USC Pacific Asia Museum into an immersive journey through myth and the immigrant story, Mythical Creatures: The Stories We Carry is sweeping in scale and deeply personal in tone, its narrative written in verse in a voice evocative of a wise elder to a loved one. The exhibition draws approximately 100 objects from USC PAM’s significant collection—which spans more than 5,000 years and includes art from East Asia, South and Southeast Asia, the Himalayas, and the Pacific Islands and their diasporas— blending them with new media technology and works by more than 20 contemporary artists, including several commissions. The result is an interdisciplinary experience in which visitors engage with the past not only through didactic explanation, but through creative activations of pan-Asian mythology that ignite feeling and memory.

Contemporary artists represented include Dinh Q. Lê, Lily Honglei, Wendy Park, Momoko Schafer, Kyungmi Shin, Sanjay Vora, and Lauren YS.
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Year of the Horse: Hoofbeats through Time
Place: Minneapolis Institute of Art - Minneapolis, 2400 Third Avenue South, USA
Date: Feb 18, 2026 to Aug 30, 2026
Detail: Bell Family Decorative Arts Court (333)
Free Exhibition

Year of the Horse: Hoofbeats through Time celebrates the enduring power, beauty, and symbolism of horses in Chinese art and culture. Across millennia, the horse has galloped through China’s imagination—as chariot puller, zodiac sign, loyal companion, and poetic metaphor.

This exhibition explores the horse as both a real creature and a cultural emblem—embodying strength, status, virtue, and aspiration. From ritual bronzes to scholar’s miniatures, imperial scrolls to popular expressions, the horse reveals a rich interplay of mythology, mobility, and meaning. As we welcome a new Year of the Horse, these timeless images invite reflection on what it means to move, strive, and endure.

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Gateway to Himalayan Art
Place: Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art - Eugene, 1430 Johnson Lane, Oregon, USA
Date: Feb 21, 2026 to Jul 05, 2026
Detail: Gateway to Himalayan Art is a flexible exhibition designed to meet the needs of diverse educational institutions, art museums, and their audiences. It serves as an entry point to the integrated components of Project Himalayan Art (a three-part initiative comprising a traveling exhibition, publication, and digital platform), highlighting a thematic approach for teaching and engagement with objects.

The exhibition’s three areas of focus are Symbols and Meanings, Materials and Technologies, and Living Practices. Traditional scroll paintings (thangkas), sculptures in various media, and ritual items comprise the diverse range of objects on view. Among the featured installations are in-depth displays that explain the process of Nepalese lost-wax metal casting and the stages of Tibetan thangka painting. Multimedia features include videos of art making and religious and cultural practices, audio recordings of voices from Himalayan communities that highlight the living traditions, and much more on the integrated digital platform that offers rich contextual material to dive deeper.
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Jes Fan: Unbounded
Place: Yale University Art Gallery - New Haven, 1111 Chapel Street (at York Street), Connecticut, USA
Date: Feb 27, 2026 to Jun 28, 2026
Detail: February 27 – June 28, 2026
Jes Fan in Conversation: Feb 26, 5:30–6:30pm
Second Floor

One of today’s leading artists, Jes Fan (b. 1990) makes sculptures that combine elegant abstract forms with an experimental and innovative approach to materials to explore the porousness of identity. Jes Fan: Unbounded focuses on works from the first decade of Fan’s career, showcasing the artist’s use of processes like glassblowing and 3D printing and materials such as resin, silicone, and biological substances. Fan’s way of conceptualizing the world has been shaped by their experience growing up in Hong Kong, both before and after its handover from Britain to China—a geographical and metaphorical crossroads of East and West, ancient and modern, colonial and postcolonial. Fan’s art challenges such binary terms, encouraging us to question inherited assumptions and consider a new way of looking at the world.
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Korean National Treasures: 2,000 Years of Art
Place: Art Institute of Chicago - Chicago, 111 South Michigan Avenue, USA
Date: Mar 07, 2026 to Jul 05, 2026
Detail: From 6th-century gilt bronze Buddhist sculpture through Joseon dynasty painting and white porcelain and contemporary paintings of the late 20th century, the works of art in this exhibition demonstrate the artistic legacy produced on the Korean peninsula over millennia.
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Vishnu’s Cosmic Ocean
Place: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery | Gallery 22 - Washington, 1050 Independence Ave. SW, USA
Date: Mar 07, 2026 to Sep 07, 2026
Detail: Blessing Ceremony: Saturday, March 7, 2-3pm
Arthur M. Sackler Gallery | Gallery 22

At the dawn of time, the Hindu god Vishnu slept on a coiled serpent floating in the primordial ocean. There, he dreamed the universe into existence. This magnificent story of creation comes to life through the largest bronze ever cast in Southeast Asia, now on loan to us from the National Museum of Cambodia.

For the first time in centuries, you can experience this sculpture’s full monumental scale: a breathtaking six meters long (nearly twenty feet). Only the head and torso have been displayed since 1936, when the sculpture was found buried in a pit with dozens of loose bronze fragments. A team of international experts has recently conserved and reconnected the body’s remnants after decades of scientific research.

Vishnu’s Cosmic Ocean presents this monumental masterpiece of Cambodian artistry and explores its rich context. Delve into the sculpture’s original island-like temple, the deep blue waters of the surrounding reservoir, and the ancient city of Angkor. Learn about water’s cultural importance as a mirror of the ocean of creation, and admire the exceptional bronze-casting and engineering skills of artists who lived a thousand years ago.

An exclusive film brings you to the present-day reservoir and its surrounding community. Cambodian American director praCh Ly shares a day in the life of a local fisherman, a merchant, and a young Buddhist monk. Titled Awkun (meaning “thank you” in Khmer), this film draws attention to the relationships that bridge sacred and urban spaces, from past to present.

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Ai Weiwei: Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads
Place: Olympic Sculpture Park - Seattle, 2901 Western Avenue, Washington, USA
Date: Mar 07, 2026 to Oct 24, 2027
Detail: Get up close with Ai Weiwei's Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads (2010) at the Olympic Sculpture Park, where you can walk among these monumental sculptures. Consisting of 12 zodiac head sculptures arranged in an arcing semicircle, each animal in Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads stands over ten feet tall and weighs over 1500 pounds. The sculptures are installed in order of the traditional Chinese zodiac cycle: Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Ram, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, and Boar.

The works reconceive the 12 zodiac heads that decorated an 18th-century Qing imperial fountain before they were looted during the Second Opium War (1856–60). Seven are based on the original heads that have survived, and Ai researched and reimagined the five animals still missing to complete the zodiac. This work embodies Ai’s long-standing questioning of our tendency to value the real over the fake and the original over the copy.

Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads joins over twenty monumental sculptures in the park, including The Eagle (1971) by Alexander Calder, Wake (2002–3) by Richard Serra, and Seattle Cloud Cover (2006) by Teresita Fernández. See this temporary installation situated in the Ackerly Meadow, just outside of the PACCAR Pavilion at the Olympic Sculpture Park. Seattle’s largest green space, the nine-acre sculpture park, is free and open daily from thirty minutes before sunrise to thirty minutes after sunset.
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Buddha and Shiva, Lotus and Dragon: Celebrating 70 Years of Asia Society and the Rockefeller Legacy
Place: Asia Society - New York, 725 Park Avenue, USA
Date: Mar 18, 2026 to Jan 03, 2027
Detail: In celebration of Asia Society’s 70th anniversary, Asia Society Museum presents Buddha and Shiva, Lotus and Dragon: Celebrating 70 Years of Asia Society and the Rockefeller Legacy.

Displaying seventy of the finest examples of Asian art in the United States drawn from Asia Society’s permanent collection, the exhibition showcases the extraordinary range of bronzes, ceramics, and metalwork thoughtfully assembled between the 1950s and the 1970s by John D. Rockefeller 3rd (1906-1978) and his wife Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller (1909-1992). John D. Rockefeller 3rd founded Asia Society in 1956 with the mission to promote greater knowledge of Asia in the United States; the bequest of the collection to Asia Society in 1979 underscores the Rockefellers’ conviction that an aesthetic encounter with great works of art promotes deep cross-cultural understanding.

With highlights including spectacular Buddhist and Hindu sculptures, and rare Chinese, Korean, and Japanese ceramics, Buddha and Shiva, Lotus and Dragon celebrates historic achievements in Asian art spanning more than two millennia. The exhibition foregrounds the transformative power of faith and the catalyzing potential of international trade in the creation of great works of art across Asia.

Buddha and Shiva, Lotus and Dragon presents a special opportunity for museum visitors to experience the unparalleled quality of the Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection at its home at Asia Society Museum in New York City.
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A Legacy Continued: Recent Acquisitions to the Asia Society Museum Collection
Place: Asia Society - New York, 725 Park Avenue, USA
Date: Mar 18, 2026 to Jan 03, 2027
Detail: A Legacy Continued features recent acquisitions received from Sandra Ferry Rockefeller and Hope Aldrich in honor of their parents, John D. Rockefeller 3rd and Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller. These gifts were originally part of Mr. and Mrs. Rockefeller’s personal collection, and this display celebrates their homecoming. These pieces complement other works within the museum collection, some of which are included in this exhibition. Together, they offer greater opportunities for comparative studies among them.

Two Chola bronze statues of Hindu deities from Hope Aldrich—a Shiva and a Satyabhama—add to the already magnificent group of Indian Chola bronzes in the collection. From Sandra Ferry, two lovely gilt bronze Chinese Buddhist statues augment the museum’s existing Chinese Buddhist sculptures, while the addition of three Thai works furthers the collection’s strength in Southeast Asian sculpture. See Selected Works in the Exhibition to preview some of these important gifts.
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Legendary Landscapes: Sublime Visions from China’s Song Dynasty
Place: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art - Kansas City, 4525 Oak Street, Missouri, USA
Date: Mar 21, 2026 to Sep 27, 2026
Detail: Deep ties between the natural world and spiritual practice have nourished the significant role of shanshui (mountain and water, “landscape”) in Chinese art for thousands of years. This role reached a new height of artistic importance during the Song dynasty (960–1279 C.E.), when imperial collectors encouraged the creation of innovative landscape paintings. This exhibition brings legendary landscapes into focus, presenting an exceptional opportunity to view world treasures in the museum’s collection.

These paintings embody the profound connections between humans, the natural world, and the greater cosmos. Through the eyes of people who traverse the landscapes, we see each painting as a microcosm of the universe presented through multiple visual perspectives. In turn, the order and completeness of Song dynasty landscapes align with the ideals of an enlightened and benevolent empire.

The museum’s rich collection extends from the Northern Song period (960–1127) to the Southern Song (1127–1279), when political conflict forced the court to relocate from the chilly north to the warmer south. The paintings’ distinctive terrains and shifting moods reflect the change in the environment. Illustrating personal journeys in nature, they encourage self-reflection and contemplation.

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Into the Waters with Senju and Bingyi: Two Contemporary Paintings
Place: Smithsonian Institution, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery | Galleries 25 - Washington, 1050 Independence Ave. SW, USA
Date: Apr 02, 2026 to Aug 23, 2026
Detail: Water is more than subject or inspiration for contemporary artists Hiroshi Senju and Bingyi—it’s a method, a material, and a philosophy. Be among the first to see their paintings, which offer two distinct, hypnotic visualizations of water.

Senju and Bingyi reimagine their cultures’ rich artistic traditions with their own bold experiments. Senju reconfigures traditional Japanese painting with contemporary techniques and abstracts real waterfalls into idealized images. Often painting outdoors, Bingyi intuitively channels raw nature but also pulls on historical Chinese ink painting and philosophy. This exhibition puts the artists’ two paintings in context with their unique methods, influences, and ethos.

Across three hanging scrolls, Bingyi’s painting bears layers of splashed ink, the sea breeze’s effects, and careful brushwork that conjures a whorl of water and petals. Senju’s folding screens recall the dripping ceramic glazes and waterfall prints in our museum’s collections. By evoking water’s essence, these artists call us to ask: How is nature both permanent and vulnerable? How does water nurture and also destroy? What beauty and mystery can we find in the very resources we rely on? And what happens when we abandon the line between artist and environment?

Step into the gallery and feel the power and beauty of water.
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Of the Hills: Pahari Paintings from India’s Himalayan Kingdoms
Place: Smithsonian Institution, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery | Galleries 23 - Washington, 1050 Independence Ave. SW, USA
Date: Apr 18, 2026 to Jul 26, 2026
Detail: The tallest mountains on earth rise from the plains of northern India in a series of steep hills, snowy peaks, and narrow valleys. From the same Himalayan region arose some of the world’s most beautiful—yet least understood—works of art.

Discover the extraordinary beauty and unique history of paintings made for Hindu kings in India’s Pahari (hill) region between the 1620s and 1830s. Pahari artists worked in radically different styles ranging from lyrical and naturalistic to boldly colored and abstracted. Of the Hills: Pahari Paintings from India’s Himalayan Kingdoms illuminates new scholarship on the collaborative artist communities in which most painters worked. Learn about the political, cultural, and religious contexts of these forty-eight exquisite works, and look closely to enter a world of fine detail that delights and astounds.

Of the Hills celebrates the remarkable collection of Pahari paintings the museum acquired from renowned art historian Catherine Glynn Benkaim and Ralph Benkaim. Some of these artworks have never been exhibited publicly before. We’ve brought these rare pieces into conversation with our historic collections and paintings on loan from the Cleveland Museum of Art.
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Navigating through Centuries: From Ancient to Global Contemporary in Korean Art
Place: Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art - Eugene, 1430 Johnson Lane, Oregon, USA
Date: Apr 25, 2026 to Mar 21, 2027
Detail: Navigating through Centuries surveys the complex trajectory of art in Korea, which was significantly impacted by socio-political upheaval and cultural developments from the fifth century to the present. The exhibition is comprised of six chronological thematic sections — from the power and religion of the Three Kingdoms period (57 BCE–668 CE), to the refined aristocratic ideals of the Goryeo (918–1392) and Confucian governance of the Joseon (1392–1910) dynasties, through vestiges of tradition after the Korean War (1950–1953), experimental practices during the modern era, and globalization of contemporary art. Each section examines how aesthetic practices respond to the evolving philosophies, ideologies, critical events, and issues of a specific historical period.
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Painted Prayers: The Japanese Folk Art Tradition of Ema
Place: Mingei International Museum - San Diego, Balboa Park, 1439 El Prado, California, USA
Date: Oct 10, 2026 to Apr 04, 2027
Detail: Painted Prayers: The Japanese Folk Art Tradition of Ema exhibition highlights one of Japan’s most fascinating folk painting traditions, ema – house-shaped wooden votive plaques offered as prayers in Japan’s Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. Most ema are small and traditionally feature hand-painted imagery of deities, animals, or objects, representing wishes as general as good fortune for the coming year or as specific as the removal of warts. The objects are overflowing with color, hope, and humor, including some very surprising visual puns. For centuries, worshippers have inscribed these ema with impassioned prayers and hung them up on wooden stands outside shrine and temple halls, hoping that the gods will read them and grant their wishes before the end of the year, when the plaques are ritually burned. Painted Prayers: The Japanese Folk Art Tradition of Ema will present the history of this religious painting tradition, explain the different uses of large and small ema, and introduce the many different categories of images and the prayers associated with each of them. Curated by Japanese art historian Meher McArthur, this will be the first museum exhibition in the United States to present such an extensive and varied display of ema, both large and small, ranging from the 18th century to the present day.
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Europe & Africa

USA & Canada | Asia

Dimensions: Contemporary Chinese Studio Crafts
Place: V&A South Kensington - London, Cromwell Road, United Kingdom
Date: Oct 28, 2025 to Sep 27, 2026
Detail: In the 1980s, Chinese artists began to reimagine craft as a medium for artistic expression. This display explores the dimensions of studio craft practice in China today, and the innovations which have grown from China's longstanding craft tradition.
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Asia

USA & Canada | Europe & Africa

Engage with history through art at Temple, National Gallery Singapore’s first rooftop installation integrating kinetic motion and sound
Place: National Gallery Singapore - Singapore, 1 St Andrew's Road, Singapore 178957, Singapore
Date: Oct 25, 2025 to Oct 11, 2026
Detail: Ng Teng Fong Roof Garden Gallery, Level 5

Embark on a meditative experience at Temple, a new participatory artwork by Vietnamese-American artist Tuan Andrew Nguyen. Commissioned by National Gallery Singapore for its Ng Teng Fong Roof Garden Commission series and presented as part of Singapore Biennale 2025: pure intention, Temple invites visitors to reflect on history and contemplate the impact of war through a multisensorial experience that blends kinetic motion and sound – underscoring the Gallery's mission to connect the art of Singapore and Southeast Asia to the world and foster critical dialogue on global issues through art.

Featuring bells and mobiles crafted from recovered and defused unexploded ordnance (UXO) from the Vietnam War, visitors are encouraged to strike the defused shells, gongs, and chimes, creating a meditative soundscape. Through this transformation of weapons of war into instruments of peace, Nguyen inspires ideas of karmic balance, reincarnation, and the memories embedded within materials, offering a powerful lens for healing and reconciliation.

Temple is the eighth edition of the Ng Teng Fong Roof Garden Commission.
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Momentary Pulses: Art in the Central Business District
Place: Various sites across Singapore’s CBD (from Raffles Place to Tanjong Pagar) - Singapore, Singapore
Date: Jan 30, 2026 to Dec 31, 2027
Detail: Date: 30 January 2026 – 31 December 2027
Venue: Various sites across Singapore’s CBD (from Raffles Place to Tanjong Pagar)
Admission: Free

Presented by The Everyday Museum (a public art initiative by Singapore Art Museum), Momentary Pulses is a public art trail that invites you to slow down and encounter art in the daily flow of life. Spanning overlooked and interstitial public spaces like linkways, open plazas and MRT passages, seven newly commissioned installations by Singapore based artists respond to the sights, sounds and commercial pulse of the Central Business District (CBD) — turning routine journeys into moments of reflection and imagination.

Featuring works by Song-Ming Ang, Finbarr Fallon, Catherine Hu, Zul Mahmod, collaborative duo Teow Yue Han and Federico Ruberto, Yang Jie and Immanuel Koh, the trail reveals the textures and histories embedded within Singapore’s urban core. The works will be launched in two phases, with the first phase featuring five installations by Song-Ming Ang, Finbarr Fallon, Catherine Hu, Zul Mahmod, and the collaborative duo Teow Yue Han and Federico Ruberto. The remaining two works by Yang Jie and Immanuel Koh will be introduced in the later part of 2026. Each installation is sited within walking distance in the CBD, including stops near OUE Link (Raffles Place), One Raffles Quay (North Tower), Asia Square (Tower 1), Shenton House, and Tanjong Pagar MRT (Exit G). Look out for kinetic and sound-based installations, AI-driven works, sculptural interventions, and site-specific gestures that reframe how we perceive the city’s everyday infrastructures. Together, these works offer distinct lenses on movement, memory, technology and transformation — encouraging new ways of seeing a district in constant motion.

As part of the public art trail’s opening, The Everyday Museum launches Story Scape (30 January – 8 February 2026), a festival organised in collaboration with StoryFest. The festival extends the trail through exciting storytelling performances, artist talks and an evening audiovisual experience at RASA Space. Programme details will be announced on SAM’s channels.
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Brandon Tay: Sangkalan
Place: Singapore - Singapore, Singapore
Date: Apr 15, 2026 to Oct 25, 2026
Detail: Step into Brandon Tay: Sangkalan, an evolving installation of a fictional island ecosystem where fragments of a “lost” coastal culture are shaped through three species — a fruit, an insect, and a bird. Together, their rhythms of growth, flight and song weave a vivid picture of how humans and nature might share perception, memory, and meaning.

Travelling across four regional libraries in Woodlands, Tampines, Jurong and Punggol, the installation unfolds as a living archive that evolves with each presentation. Visitors can encounter new elements over time, making each stop a slightly different experience. Through vibrant textiles, sculptural forms, and archival materials, Singaporean artist Brandon Tay translates the island’s collective memories into a language of colour, geometry, and symbols. Echoing the decentralised logic of blockchain networks, Sangkalan invites visitors to reimagine information systems, their origins and how nature might inspire new ways of sensing, connecting, and remembering.

Brandon Tay: Sangkalan is held in collaboration with the National Library Board. Through the Library showcases, SAM continues to extend contemporary art beyond traditional museum settings and into civic and community spaces, encouraging encounters with contemporary art in unexpected and accessible everyday environments.

Venues:
15 April – 31 May 2026: Woodlands Regional Library
3 June – 19 July 2026: Tampines Regional Library
22 July – 6 September 2026: Jurong Regional Library
9 September – 25 October 2026: Punggol Regional Library

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Hiroshi Sugimoto: Form is Emptiness
Place: Singapore Art Museum - Singapore, Singapore
Date: May 29, 2026 to Oct 04, 2026
Detail: Singapore Art Museum proudly presents Hiroshi Sugimoto: Form is Emptiness, the first major solo exhibition in Southeast Asia dedicated to the practice of internationally renowned Japanese artist Hiroshi Sugimoto. Conceived in dialogue with the Buddhist cosmological concept of the Five Elements (Earth, Water, Fire, Wind and Void), the exhibition unfolds across five interconnected sections that loop into one another, mirroring the cyclical rhythms of nature and life. This elemental framework reflects Sugimoto’s enduring inquiry into time, perception, and the structure of reality.

Bringing together over 60 works spanning five decades of his multidisciplinary practice, including significant, new, and rarely seen works, the exhibition reveals the breadth of Sugimoto’s oeuvre across photography, sculpture, and large-scale installation. From his meditative seascapes to architectural interventions and contemplative objects, Sugimoto’s works delicately balance a strong material presence with a deep metaphysical inquiry.

Form is Emptiness offers an immersive introduction to the work of one of the world’s most significant contemporary artists. Moving between permanence and impermanence, visibility and void, the exhibition invites audiences to slow down and consider how form itself can become a vessel for reflection, and how, through Sugimoto’s lens, the material world becomes a mirror for the mind.

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