Asian Art Calendar of Events

Saturday, January 29, 2022

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The Peacock Room in Blue and White
Place: Freer gallery 12, Smithsonian Institution - Washington, 1050 Independence Ave SW, USA
Date: May 18, 2020 to Jun 05, 2022
Detail: Blue-and-white Chinese porcelains once again fill the shelves of the Peacock Room, just as they did in the 1870s, when Frederick Leyland, a shipping magnate in London, dined there.

Blue-and-white porcelain dating to the Kangxi period enliven the east and north walls of the Peacock Room. These pieces from the permanent collection of the Freer Gallery are similar to what Leyland would have displayed. Recently commissioned ceramics line the west and south walls. These new porcelains are part of a 1,500-year-old tradition of making porcelains in Jingdezhen, China. Porcelain production during the Kangxi period (1662–1722) expanded China’s export trade with Europe, sparked the Chinamania craze in the nineteenth century, and bolstered the East-West exchange that endures to this day.

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Conservation in Action: Japanese Buddhist Sculpture in a New Light
Place: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston - Boston, 465 Huntington Avenue, Massachusetts, USA
Date: Dec 15, 2020 to Jul 03, 2022
Detail: A rare, behind-the-scenes look at the conservation of seven Buddhist sculptures.

Visitors are invited to watch as objects conservators study and treat seven Japanese Buddhist sculptures in a public conservation studio. The wooden figures—images of worship depicting Buddhas, Guardian Kings, and a Wisdom King—are decorated with polychromy or gilding and date from the 9th to the 12th centuries. The conservation project occupies an entire gallery in the Museum, allowing visitors to observe the techniques employed by objects conservators as they carefully clean the sculptures and secure areas of loose paint, lacquer, and gilding. The sculptures have been relocated from the Museum's beloved Japanese Buddhist Temple Room, where they normally reside, enabling museum-goers to see the objects in a new setting for the first time in decades. Also on exhibit are three sculptures from storage that serve as points of comparison to exemplify different sculptural techniques, styles, and states of preservation.

The public studio also provides a space for conservators and curators to look closely at the sculptures in collaboration with the Museum's research scientists, identifying the original artists' materials, documenting early restorations, and working with wood anatomists in Japan to confirm the wood identifications. When the project is complete, the sculptures will return to the refurbished Japanese Buddhist Temple Room.

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Tempus Fugit :: 光陰矢の如し:: Time Flies
Place: Harn Museum of Art - Gainesville, 3259 Hull Road, Florida, USA
Date: Dec 21, 2020 to Feb 27, 2022
Detail: The exhibition Tempus Fugit:: 光陰矢の如し:: Time Flies is a reflection on time and its many meanings. This broad concept has been applied to the Japanese art collections at the Harn Museum as an investigative tool to look at how time has been measured in the visual record, how art objects can portray several moments in time, and how artists experience time during the production of their work. The celebration of the natural world, through life cycles and the acknowledgment of mortality and the change of the seasons, is also a recurring theme in Japanese art and celebrated within this exhibition.

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Masters and Masterpieces: Chinese Art from the Florence and Herbert Irving Collection
Place: The Met Fifth Avenue - New York, 1000 Fifth Avenue, USA
Date: Jan 29, 2021 to Jun 05, 2022
Detail: An outstanding selection of Chinese art gifted to The Met by Florence and Herbert Irving is the focus of this exhibition. Beginning in the early 1970s, the Irvings built one of the most comprehensive and superb collections of Chinese art in the world. For more than three decades, the couple helped The Met acquire important artworks and provided support for exhibitions, and their passion was a factor in building the current exhibition galleries dedicated to Chinese decorative arts. Their generous gifts of more than five hundred exceptional objects fundamentally transformed the holdings of Chinese art at The Met.

The approximately 120 works on display (in each rotation) cover almost all major categories of Chinese art, with a focus on three-dimensional objects, including lacquer, ceramic, metal work, jade, bamboo, and stone carvings. Created by both famous and unknown masters, these extraordinary works represent the artistic sophistication and technical virtuosity of Chinese decorative arts from the tenth through the early twentieth century. In addition to the Irvings’ well-known assemblage of lacquer ware, the exhibition also showcases their recent gifts of a group of jade and bamboo works from the eighteenth-century imperial workshop that have never before been on display. This presentation reunites important private loans formerly in the Irvings’ collection with comparative pieces from The Met collection.

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Masterworks: A Journey through Himalayan Art
Place: The Rubin Museum of Art - New York, 150 West 17th St., USA
Date: Jan 29, 2021 to Jan 08, 2024
Detail: Masterworks: A Journey through Himalayan Art explores major strands in the development of art from the Himalayan region covering a period of more than one thousand years, with objects drawn primarily from the Rubin Museum’s collection.

Masterworks is organized geographically and chronologically, showcasing the diverse regional traditions of Tibet in relation to the neighboring areas of Eastern India, Kashmir, Nepal, Bhutan, China, and Mongolia. Juxtaposing the art of Himalayan regions over time sheds light on the geographic, historical, religious, and artistic interrelationships among these cultures.

This ongoing exhibition reflects our evolving understanding of the relatively young field of Himalayan art. Masterworks is regularly updated as new art objects and texts come to light, reflecting the latest developments in the field. The current iteration features several loans from the Zhiguan Museum of Fine Art, which brings further depth to the themes and extraordinary craftsmanship demonstrated throughout the exhibition.

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Japan: A History of Style
Place: The Met Fifth Avenue - New York, 1000 Fifth Avenue, USA
Date: Mar 08, 2021 to Apr 24, 2022
Detail: This exhibition celebrates how gifts and acquisitions of the last decade have transformed The Met’s ability to narrate the story of Japanese art by both expanding and deepening the range of remarkable artworks that can meaningfully elucidate the past. Each of the ten rooms that make up the Arts of Japan Galleries features a distinct genre, school, or style, representing an array of works in nearly every medium, from ancient times to the present. Highlights include the debut of a spectacular group of contemporary metalwork by Living National Treasures and emerging artists, and, in the first rotation, a selection of woodblock prints from the Lee E. Dirks Collection.

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Bodhisattvas of Wisdom, Compassion, and Power
Place: The Met Fifth Avenue - New York, 1000 Fifth Avenue, USA
Date: Mar 27, 2021 to Oct 16, 2022
Detail: Within the Buddhist traditions of the Himalayas, three bodhisattvas emerge as personifications of Buddhist ideals. Manjushri, who cuts through ignorance and personifies correct knowledge; Avalokiteshvara, a compassionate protector of the devout that helps reveal the true nature of reality; and Vajrapani as the embodiment of the energy of enlightenment. Focusing on dramatic images, a worshipper could first evoke the subtle knowledge that Manjushri personifies, then with Avalokiteshvara’s aid, it is possible to proceed in a way free from self-imposed delusions, while Vajrapani’s transcendent power aids in destroying jealousy and hatred that stand in the way of enlightenment. Venerating these three bodhisattvas together has a long history, and they play an essential role in the introduction of Buddhism to Tibet. This exhibition draws together a dramatic group of paintings, sculptures, ritual objects, and illustrated manuscripts from the eleventh to eighteenth centuries, made primarily for Nepal and Tibet’s monastic institutions. Beautifully cast sculptures and accessible paintings showing peaceful manifestations of the bodhisattvas intended for the public are juxtaposed with complex tantric images of the highest quality done in portable media made for monastic elites. Vajrayana images offered powerful ways to access these bodhisattvas as a personal path to enlightenment, though often undertaking such rituals was done with a ruler’s sponsorship for the people’s benefit. This exhibition presents some of the sublime representations of these three bodhisattvas at the center of this great devotional tradition embraced across the Himalayas.

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Shimmering Surfaces: Chinese Lacquer Motifs and Techniques
Place: Minneapolis Institute of Art - Minneapolis, 2400 Third Avenue South, Minnesota, USA
Date: Mar 31, 2021 to Apr 10, 2022
Detail: Lacquer art has a long history in China, beginning more than 5,000 years ago. Richly decorated lacquer wares often invoke themes and ideas intended to bring wealth, health, moral ethics, good luck, longevity, and even immortality to their owners—and also communicate their wealth and status. Featuring works from Mia’s collection, this installation showcases a wide variety of forms, styles, and techniques, as well as an array of themes that remain significant in Chinese culture even today.

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Weng Family Collection of Chinese Painting: Travel and Home
Place: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston - Boston, 465 Huntington Avenue, Massachusetts, USA
Date: Apr 03, 2021 to Mar 06, 2022
Detail: In China, poets and artists often express their passion for places through their art forms. While the generic landscape is a basic theme in Chinese painting, many works also display artists’ emotions about specific locations or longing for their hometowns.

In 2018 and 2019, Wan-go H. C. Weng (1918–2020) made the largest gift of Chinese paintings and calligraphy to the MFA in the institution’s history, comprising more than 230 objects acquired and passed down through six generations of his family. This exhibition features approximately 20 works from the gift that relate to travel and home—concepts that have taken on new depths of meaning since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, when people all over the world were largely confined to their houses.

“Weng Family Collection of Chinese Painting: Travel and Home” includes paintings and calligraphy by some of the greatest masters from the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1911) dynasties. Luo Pin’s Sites of Su Shi’s Travels (1780) traces the route of the 11th-century poet and scholar Su Shi. Multiple works represent the art and regional culture of Changshu, the Weng family’s hometown. A masterpiece among them is Ten Thousand Miles along the Yangzi River (1699), a 53-foot-long scroll by Wang Hui, one of the Qing dynasty’s most prominent artists and a native of Changshu. The most recent work in the exhibition, a short color film by Wan-go Weng himself titled A Town by the Yangtze (1948), presents a pre-modern Chinese cityscape—including scenes of daily life and architecture—recorded in Changshu in 1948.

This is the second in a series of three exhibitions celebrating the landmark donation made by Wan-go H. C. Weng, a longtime supporter of the MFA who, until he passed away in 2020 at the age of 102, devoted his life to the preservation, study, and promotion of China’s cultural heritage.

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Clay and Paper: Japanese Ceramics and Screens
Place: Phoenix Art Museum - Phoenix, 1625 North Central Ave., Arizona, USA
Date: Apr 24, 2021 to Apr 24, 2022
Detail: Clay and Paper: Japanese Ceramics and Screens presents an array of functional and decorative modern ceramics and traditional screens from the island nation.

In traditional Japan, palaces and castles were designed with large interior spaces that could be divided as needed with large, movable, folding screens. Made with wooden framework covered with paper, screens were both functional and decorative. Artists from different schools of painting were commissioned to paint subtle landscapes or colorful processional and festive scenes that flowed across both screens in a pair. These images often evoked a particular season or celebration.

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Splendid Visions: Gifts from the Robert and Amy Clague Collections
Place: Phoenix Art Museum - Phoenix, 1625 North Central Ave., Arizona, USA
Date: Apr 24, 2021 to Apr 24, 2022
Detail: Splendid Visions: Gifts from the Robert and Amy Clague Collections features examples of Chinese cloisonné and bronzes, Chinese textiles, Hindu and Buddhist manuscript covers, and more donated to Phoenix Art Museum by the Clague family.

Throughout its 60-year history, Phoenix Art Museum has developed a distinctive collection of Asian art through gifts from local collectors, whose legacy of generosity benefits visitors of all ages and will do so for generations to come. This spirit of visionary philanthropy characterized Robert and Amy Clague, both of whom passed away in 1995 and 2020, respectively. Although their individual interests varied, the Clagues each assembled collections that earned international acclaim for the Museum. Robert Clague collected Chinese cloisonné and, later, Chinese bronzes, while Amy Clague collected Chinese and Southeast Asian textiles, as well as Hindu and Buddhist manuscript covers. Through their unique interests, the Clagues inspired each other to seek works of art that depict life experiences different from their own, with compositions rich in cultural meaning and religious symbolism. Most importantly, they shared a vision of Phoenix Art Museum as a place in which all people might learn about the peoples and cultures of Asia.

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The Golden Temple: Center of Sikh Faith
Place: Phoenix Art Museum - Phoenix, 1625 North Central Ave., Arizona, USA
Date: Apr 24, 2021 to Apr 24, 2022
Detail: Featuring watercolor paintings, photographs, prints, and more, The Golden Temple: Center of Sikh Faith showcases the enduring splendor of Sikhism’s central spiritual monument. Located in what is today the city of Amritsar, in the Punjab state of northwestern India, the Harmandir Sahib (the Punjabi term for “The Golden Temple”) is the centralized place of worship for all Sikhs. The idea for the temple was conceived by Guru Arjan Sahib (1563-1606), the fifth Sikh Guru. In 1577, a town and water tank were built on the site where the temple would be erected, and construction on the building began in 1588, with a Muslim saint laying the cornerstone. The Guru’s design for The Golden Temple placed the monument at the center of the water tank. A causeway connected the sacred structure to a circumambulatory path, and doors on the temple’s four sides symbolized the accessibility of the Sikh faith, which makes no distinction between the four Hindu castes. Builders completed construction in 1601, but through the decades, The Golden Temple was destroyed several times. The present structure dates to 1764, and renovations over the centuries introduced various design elements. The temple’s upper floors, for example, are now covered in 750 kilos of pure gold, an addition made by Maharaja Ranjit Singh, founder of the Sikh Empire of India (1799-1849).

Spanning the 19th century through the 21th century, The Golden Temple: Center of Sikh Faith presents historical and contemporary works depicting the renowned site, which harmoniously blends art and architectural elements from the Hindu and Muslim traditions. Featured works include images by Felice Beato, one of the first photographers to capture images of Asia, and watercolors, prints, and paintings by Indian and American artists who have visited the temple in the past two centuries. The exhibition culminates with works by both Sikh and non-Sikh contemporary artists whose visual narratives draw inspiration from The Golden Temple and its intricate, extraordinary design.

The Golden Temple: Center of Sikh Faith is presented in the Khanuja Family Sikh Heritage Gallery, the second gallery space in the United States dedicated exclusively to the exhibition of Sikh art. The exhibition continues the Museum’s initiative to showcase artwork and objects that explore themes of Sikh history and visual culture.

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Amano Kazumi: Prints from the Kimm-Grufferman Collection
Place: Minneapolis Institute of Art - Minneapolis, 2400 Third Avenue South, USA
Date: May 29, 2021 to May 29, 2022
Detail: In 1964, a young David Hockney won First Prize at the International Exhibition of Drawings and Engravings in Lugano, Switzerland; at the same event, Amano Kazumi received an excellence award for prints of his abstract Moral series. Amano first studied under Munakata Shikō, Japan’s best-known contemporary print artist, who is famous for his roughly executed black-and-white designs. Amano’s early works emulate Munakata’s style but take on subjects of his home, Toyama, such as dances associated with the iron mills. In the early 1960s, Amano radically changed his style and from then on created abstract shapes in strong and bright colors. In 1971, Amano left Japan and moved with his family to New York. This exhibition focuses on Amano’s time in Japan and presents prints from the extensive collection of Sue Y. S. Kimm and Seymour Grufferman.

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20 Dances: Japanese Calligraphy Then and Now
Place: Minneapolis Institute of Art - Minneapolis, 2400 Third Avenue South, USA
Date: Jun 19, 2021 to Apr 10, 2022
Detail: In East Asia, calligraphy has been hailed as the highest of all art forms for more than 15 centuries. It’s not hard to understand why: With more than 80,000 Chinese characters and infinite graphic variations, the expressive potential is unlimited. The results, as seen in this exhibition, speak for themselves. Each work is a unique expression of the artist’s personality, offering a glimpse into the culture that held calligraphy in such high esteem.

The Japanese writing system was adopted from Chinese characters; given the Japanese reverence for Chinese artistic traditions, these works explore the full range of scripts possible with these characters: seal script (tensho), running script (gyosho), cursive script (sosho), clerical script (reisho), and standard script (kaisho). Calligraphy’s emphasis on movement and timing suggests dancing, and each script has its own rhythm, from the formal strictness of seal script to the wild dance of cursive writing.

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Companions in Solitude: Reclusion and Communion in Chinese Art
Place: The Met Fifth Avenue - New York, 1000 Fifth Avenue, USA
Date: Jul 31, 2021 to Aug 14, 2022
Detail: This exhibition will explore the twin themes of solitude and togetherness in Chinese art. For more than two thousand years, reclusion—removing oneself from society—has been presented as the ideal condition for mental cultivation and transcending worldly troubles. At the same time, communion with like-minded people has been celebrated as essential to the human experience. This choice, to be alone or to be together, has been central to the lives of thinkers and artists, and Chinese art abounds with images of figures who pursued both paths—as well as those who wove them together in complex and surprising ways. Companions in Solitude, presented in two rotations, will bring together more than 120 works of painting, calligraphy, and decorative arts that illuminate this choice—depictions of why and how people have sought space from the world or attempted to bridge the divide between themselves and others. In the wake of 2020, a year that has isolated us physically but connected us virtually in unprecedented ways, this exploration of premodern Chinese reclusion and communion will invite meditation on the fracture and facture of human connection in our own time.

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Origins: Collecting to Create the Nelson-Atkins
Place: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art - Kansas City, 4525 Oak Street, USA
Date: Aug 14, 2021 to Mar 06, 2022
Detail: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City opened its doors in 1933, but the collection was beginning to be built at a frantic pace three years prior. The new exhibition, Origins: Collecting to Create the Nelson-Atkins, explores the very beginnings of the collection as well as the people who made choices about what types of art to collect, the challenges and opportunities of acquiring art during the Great Depression, and the vast diversity of the museum’s first objects. There are more than 50 artworks in the exhibition, most of them acquired in the museum’s first 10 years.

The Nelson-Atkins is the legacy of two Kansas Citians: newspaper publisher William Rockhill Nelson and retired teacher Mary Atkins. Both left funds upon their deaths to create an art museum in Kansas City: Atkins’ money for a building, and Nelson’s to acquire art. The group who managed Nelson’s estate were responsible for assembling the future museum’s art collection.

“Laurence Sickman was one of the museum’s first advisors on Asian art,” said MacKenzie Mallon, Provenance Specialist at the Nelson-Atkins. “He acquired much of the museum’s foundational Chinese art collection, including some of its most important works, and became our first Curator of Asian Art in 1935.”

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Folding Into Space: Japanese Design and Crafts
Place: Seattle Art Museum - Seattle, 1400 East Prospect Street, USA
Date: Sep 18, 2021 to Sep 25, 2022
Detail: Creating three-dimensional objects by folding, layering, and weaving two-dimensional materials is a core concept in Japanese design and crafts. Focused on these three techniques, this installation presents objects from the museum's permanent collection and private holdings, ranging from textiles and paintings to ceramics and bamboo baskets.

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Reflected Beauty: Chinese Reverse Glass Paintings from the Mei Lin Collection
Place: University Museum and Art Gallery - Pokfulam, 90 Bonham Road, Hong Kong
Date: Sep 24, 2021 to Jan 30, 2022
Detail: The University Museum and Art Gallery (UMAG) of the University of Hong Kong (HKU) will present Reflected Beauty: Chinese Reverse Glass Paintings from the Mei Lin Collection. Chinese reverse glass paintings have rarely been displayed in museums and few studies have considered their compositional elements and iconographic themes. Surviving eighteenth century paintings were often created for the export market and catered to the taste of western patrons in Europe and North America. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the production of reverse paintings became much more locally focused, with artists creating scenes filled with auspicious symbols and literary references that merchants sold mainly within China.
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Weaving Splendor: Treasures of Asian Textiles
Place: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art - Kansas City, 4525 Oak Street, USA
Date: Sep 25, 2021 to Mar 06, 2022
Detail: For the first time in decades, the Nelson-Atkins will display rarely seen Chinese, Indian, Japanese, and Persian clothing, costumes, and textiles. Made with fine materials, exemplary techniques, and artistry, Asian luxury textiles were central to global trade. The sumptuous textiles in this exhibition conveyed the identities, status, and taste of both local and international patrons and consumers. Luxurious costumes of the court performed power, while striking theater robes brought stage characters to life. Sturdy wall hangings and furniture covers transformed palaces, temples, and homes, while shimmering tapestry-woven carpets were created as diplomatic gifts for foreign rulers. The extraordinary stories of these treasures of the collection take visitors on an irreducible journey across continents, from the 1500s to today.

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Kamoda Shōji: The Art of Change
Place: Minneapolis Institute of Art - Minneapolis, 2400 Third Avenue South, Minnesota, USA
Date: Dec 11, 2021 to Apr 17, 2022
Detail: Kamoda Shōji (1933–1983) became one of Japan’s most celebrated potters. His groundbreaking approach to the interplay among material, form and surface helped revolutionize the way Japanese artists approached ceramic production. Inquisitive, thoughtful and tireless, Kamoda was driven to innovate and experiment. The exhibition, the first outside of Japan, features nearly 50 works from 10 private American collections and spans the breadth of his brilliant artistic career.

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Fashioning an Empire: Safavid Textiles from the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha
Place: National Museum of Asian Art - Washington, 1050 Independence Ave. SW, USA
Date: Dec 18, 2021 to May 15, 2022
Detail: With their sumptuous surfaces, original designs, and technical sophistication, luxury textiles played a critical role in the social, cultural, religious, and economic life of Safavid Iran (1501–1722). Used for clothing, furnishing, and movable architecture, fabrics also functioned as important symbols of power and as ubiquitous forms of artistic expression. In the seventeenth century, they became the most lucrative economic commodity in Iran and were exported by land and sea to both Europe and the East, generating tremendous wealth and prosperity for the Safavid Empire.

To celebrate the Qatar-USA 2021 Year of Culture, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art is collaborating with the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, part of Qatar Museums, on an exhibition focusing on a selection of extraordinary seventeenth-century textiles and full-length portraits from Safavid Iran. Fine illustrated manuscript folios from our collections are also included in the exhibition.

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The Three Perfections: Image, Poem, and Calligraphy in Chinese Painting
Place: Minneapolis Institute of Art - Minneapolis, 2400 Third Avenue South, Minnesota, USA
Date: Dec 18, 2021 to Dec 04, 2022
Detail: Western viewers are often curious about why Chinese artists write on their paintings and what the characters say. This exhibition answers such questions and explores the idea of integrating fine painting, poetry, and calligraphy, known as the “Three Perfections,” in a single artwork.

In traditional China, painting was regarded as “silent poetry,” and poetry as “painting with sound.” Both could only be manifested through the “art of handwriting”—calligraphy. Scholars and scholar-artists used calligraphic brushstrokes in their paintings and considered their artworks to be vehicles of self-expression. As a result, painting was not only considered the only art pure and lyrical enough to stand on an equal footing with poetry and contemplative thought, but also something through which one could experience sight, sound, smell, touch, and emotions.

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Embodied Change: South Asian Art Across Time
Place: Seattle Asian Art Museum - Seattle, 1400 East Prospect Street, USA
Date: Jan 14, 2022 to Jul 10, 2022
Detail: Spanning a period from the third millennium BCE to today, the works in this exhibition offer transformational and compelling images of the human body. Most of the artists depict the female body, using the form in myriad ways: as an object of veneration, as a mode of self-representation, and to question the safety of public spaces.

Within the canon of South Asian art, a typical and potent subject is Devi, the great goddess who holds immeasurable sacrality and strength. In modern and contemporary art, South Asian-identified artists have reacted against traditional norms and challenged gender, national, and social stereotypes. Some have reoriented the exemplary and fierce model of the goddess. Others have attended to new subjects, selecting everyday townspeople—such as fisherwomen and local schoolgirls—to be the protagonists of their work.

Each of the artists in the exhibition invest the human body with the power to question social, political, and normative fictions. By doing so, they invite you to explore the complexities of the human body: to contemplate and question which bodies are conferred with greater degrees of humanity and perhaps to imagine, with the artists, different ways to embody change.

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Falcons: The Art of the Hunt
Place: Smithsonian Institution - Washington, 1050 Independence Ave SW, USA
Date: Jan 15, 2022 to Jul 17, 2022
Detail: Swift, fierce, and loyal, falcons have been celebrated for their exceptional qualities for millennia. In ancient Egypt, they were closely associated with Horus, the god of the heavens. By the early eighth-century in Syria, falcons were groomed and trained to become skillful hunters at the royal courts. The art of falconry soon spread across the rest of the Islamic world and as far as China. It is still practiced in many societies today, especially in the Arab world. A selection of paintings and objects from ancient Egypt to China offer a glimpse into the fascinating world of falcons.
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Shin-Hanga expressions of Landscapes
Place: Moonlit Sea Prints - Easthampton, 116 Pleasant Street, #226, Massachusetts, USA
Date: Feb 04, 2022 to Feb 28, 2022
Detail: Moonlit Sea Prints of Easthampton MA is presenting its inaugural exhibition, Shin-hanga Expressions of Landscapes, exploring underlying emotions of solitude, wonderment, quietness and reflection through prints by Kawase Hasui, Takashi Ito, Shiro Kasamatsu, Tsuchiya Koitsu, Ito Yuhan and others. February 4th through February 27th; open the first weekend, by appointment the rest of the month.

Japanese woodblock print art (ukiyo-e or “picture[s] of the floating world”), at the end of the 1800s, was a dying art form. Tastes were changing, but following the opening of Japanese culture to Western influences and technology post-Commodore Perry and the Convention of Kanagawa in 1854, Japan was undergoing intense modernization. The West was influencing all parts of Japanese culture, from the dress to the art to the technology and everything in between.

Shōzaburō Watanabe was a businessman in the export business who stepped into the dying industry of woodblock print art and created what he termed “New Prints” or shin-hanga. Watanabe created his publishing house, S. Watanabe Color Print Co., and began employing highly skilled carvers and printers, and commissioned artists to design prints that combined traditional Japanese techniques with elements of contemporary Western painting, such as perspective and shadows. Utilizing his export business expertise, and operating from offices in Japan, the US and London, he created a market for Japanese art. From a thematic perspective, he and many of his artists sought to capture the nostalgia of pre-modern Japan but to depict it using the new techniques that they were learning through cross-cultural exchange and experimentation. The results are some of the most breathtaking landscapes created in the medium of woodblock printing, often with the underlying emotions of solitude, wonderment, quietness and reflection.

Friday, February 4th through February 27th.

Opening Friday, February 4th at 5pm to 8pm, Saturday February 5th from noon until 6pm.

Open Monday - Friday, 10am-2pm by appointment only.

Moonlit Sea Prints
116 Pleasant Street, Suite 226
Eastworks
Easthampton, MA 01027

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Tsherin Sherpa: Spirits
Place: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts - Richmond, 200 N. Arthur Ashe Boulevard, Virginia, USA
Date: Feb 19, 2022 to Oct 16, 2022
Detail: Explore the captivating paintings and sculptures of Nepalese-born Tibetan American artist Tsherin Sherpa. This thought-provoking, participatory art experience is presented in the form of a narrative telling a story of loss, struggle, and re-empowerment. Last seen at VMFA in the 2019 exhibition Awaken: A Tibetan Buddhist Journey Toward Enlightenment, Sherpa’s groundbreaking artwork continues to garner international acclaim. This focused mid-career retrospective is the global artist’s first solo museum exhibition.

Tsherin Sherpa’s works are grounded in the traditional Buddhist art of his training but stretch, bend, reconfigure, and repurpose its forms to explore contemporary concerns. The exhibition’s 36 paintings and sculptures trace the evolution of his “Spirits” series whose subjects resemble Tibetan Buddhist deities transformed by the modern world. Dislocated from their home—an experience familiar to the artist and communities all over the world—these figures move from grief and confusion, to courage and self-assurance, to triumph and wisdom. In their multiple manifestations, the Spirits reveal the power and endurance of transformation.

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Mind Over Matter: Zen in Medieval Japan
Place: Smithsonian Institution - Washington, 1050 Independence Ave. SW, USA
Date: Feb 26, 2022 to Jul 24, 2022
Detail: This exhibition showcases the breadth of the museum’s medieval Zen collections, highlighting rare and striking works from Japan and China to illustrate the visual, spiritual, and philosophical power of Zen. Rooted in the culture of medieval Japan, the lessons of Zen have become an important part of contemporary American life, as applicable today as they were in premodern times.

Monastic Zen painting in medieval Japan (ca. 1200–1600) is one of the great artistic traditions of East Asia and of the world. The abbreviated, seemingly impromptu paintings in monochrome ink have influenced artists and enthusiasts for centuries. Many of the most accomplished artists of this era—Mokuan, Ryōzen, Shūbun, Sesshū, Sesson, and many others—were Zen monks credited by later generations as the creators of a unique and remarkable legacy of ink painting. Indeed, Zen monk-painters inspired a number of the most important professional painting lineages of Japan’s early modern period (ca. 1600–1868) and formed a thematic backbone of Japanese art and cultural identity in modern times.

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Our Blue Planet: Global Visions of Water
Place: Seattle Art Museum - Seattle, 1300 First Avenue, USA
Date: Mar 18, 2022 to May 30, 2022
Detail: MAR 18 – MAY 30 2022

SEATTLE ART MUSEUM

SIMONYI SPECIAL EXHIBITION GALLERIES

Earth is known as the blue planet with water covering 70% of its surface. Artistic responses to water in this exhibition will offer a world tour to contemplate quiet rivers, remember journeys across stormy seas, savor days in swimming pools, and witness the changing role of water in our lives.

Relying on the museum’s holdings and local loans, this exhibition will also encourage reflection on the evolving status of our planet’s health. As questions are raised about global warming, rising sea levels and altered waterways, audiences are invited to step back from the regime of statistics and view how artists are fostering creative exchanges about the future of water.

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Bali: Agency and Power in Southeast Asia
Place: Pacific Asia Museum - Pasadena, 46 North Los Robles Avenue, California, USA
Date: Mar 18, 2022 to Jun 12, 2022
Detail: This exhibition centers on paintings collected in Bali by cultural anthropologists Gregory Bateson (1904-1980) and Margaret Mead (1901-1978) during their fieldwork on the island from 1936 until 1939. Utilizing the paintings as a foundation for exploring the stories, beliefs, and daily lives of Balinese people, Bali: Agency and Power in Southeast Asia will guide visitors to a greater understanding of this often romanticized but frequently misunderstood island and examine the role that painters, tourists, and anthropologists had in shaping new art styles for communicating detailed aspects of Balinese society and beliefs.

In Bali: Agency and Power in Southeast Asia, a select number of the Bateson-Mead collection of paintings from Batuan will be displayed to introduce visitors to the collection, its origins, and its purpose in building insight into Balinese culture, belief, and worldview. The exhibition will build from existing literature on the Bateson-Mead Balinese paintings and lead visitors to explore the paintings to develop insight into Balinese daily life and world view. With close examination, visitors will have the opportunity to see representations of traditions from the past that continue to be a source of entertainment in Bali today. Visitors can also study the way that peoples’ interactions and familial relationships are exaggerated to tell stories and create understanding of actions and their consequences. Finally, viewers will see the role that beliefs related to deities, mythical animals, and ancestor spirits have in the way that many Balinese process the world around them
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Revealing Krishna: Journey to Cambodia’s Sacred Mountain
Place: National Museum of Asian Art - Washington, 1050 Independence Ave SW, USA
Date: Apr 30, 2022 to Sep 17, 2022
Detail: Revealing Krishna transports visitors to a sacred mountain in the floodplains of southern Cambodia. The exhibition showcases a monumental sculpture of the Hindu god Krishna lifting Mount Govardhan to protect his people from a torrential storm sent by an angry god. For the first time, the sculpture is explored in the context of its original environment, as part of a multi-religious landscape and quite literally built into a mountain. This larger than life-size sculpture is one of eight monumental deity figures recovered from cave temples on the two-peaked mountain of Phnom Da near the ancient metropolis of Angkor Borei. The exhibition tells the life story of this sculptural masterpiece—spanning 1,500 years and three continents—and unveils the newly restored Krishna in an exhibition that integrates art, immersive video installations, and interactive design.

The exhibition includes an original short film directed by renowned Cambodian American film maker PraCh Ly. Titled Satook, a word of blessing spoken at the end of Cambodian prayers, the film examines the role of ancient sacred sites in present-day religious landscapes, and the transformation of religious traditions in Cambodian American diaspora communities.

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A Splendid Land: Paintings from Royal Udaipur
Place: Smithsonian Institution - Washington, 1050 Independence Ave. SW, USA
Date: Nov 19, 2022 to May 14, 2023
Detail: Around 1700, artists in Udaipur (a court in northwest India) began creating immersive paintings that conveyed the mood (bhava) of the city’s palaces, lakes, and mountains. These large paintings and their emphasis on lived experience have never been the focus of an exhibition.

With dazzling paintings on paper and cloth—many on public view for the first time—A Splendid Land reveals how artists conveyed emotions, depicted places, celebrated water resources, and fostered personal bonds over some two hundred years in the rapidly changing political and cultural landscapes of early modern South Asia.

The exhibition is organized as a journey that begins at Udaipur’s center and continues outward: first to the city, then to the countryside, and finally to the cosmos. A soundscape by the renowned filmmaker Amit Dutta invites contemporary audiences to sense–and not just see—the moods of these extraordinary places and paintings.

A Splendid Land: Paintings from Royal Udaipur will also be on view at the Cleveland Museum of Art in Summer 2022.

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Europe & Africa

USA & Canada | Asia

Lotus Moon: Art and Poetry of a Buddhist Nun Otagaki Rengetsu (1791-1875)
Place: Museum of the Monastery of Pedralbes - Barcelona, Baixada del monestir, 9, Spain
Date: Nov 19, 2021 to Apr 17, 2022
Detail: This exhibition presents for the first time to the city and the country the extraordinary life and work of a great Kyoto poet and artist. An example of how art and poetry can become a yearning and also a turning point in the struggle and enjoyment of an ephemeral life.

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Asia

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New Horizons: Ways of Seeing Hong Kong Art in the 80s and 90s
Place: Hong Kong Museum of Art - Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, 10 Salisbury Road, Hong Kong
Date: Mar 05, 2021 to Apr 24, 2022
Detail: This exhibition examines the crucial turning points, new trends and sensibilities in contemporary art in Hong Kong during the 1980s and 1990s. Taking the curator's experiences as a point of departure, the exhibition sheds light on the creative breakthroughs of young local artists in different mediums including installation art, new media and photography, which ushered in the rise of new artistic experimentation and formats. In addition to the showcase of artworks by seven representative artists and artist collectives, the exhibition features a restaging of iconic art spaces of the time, as well as an archival section, re-presenting the significant shifts in Hong Kong's art scene during the era.

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The Way We Eat
Place: Art Gallery of NSW - Sydney, Art Gallery Road, Australia
Date: Apr 03, 2021 to Apr 03, 2022
Detail: The Way We Eat brings together works of art related to food – that ancient source of inspiration, pleasure and anxiety. It considers what we eat; how food is made, stored and consumed; the evolution of culinary wares; cultural exchange; and the ritual and symbolic meanings associated with food.

Combining historical treasures with dramatic contemporary artworks, the exhibition is drawn from the Gallery’s extensive Asian art collection and loans from private collections.

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Enchanting Expeditions: Chinese Trade Porcelains across the Globe
Place: The Chinese University of Hong Kong - Shatin, N.T. , Hong Kong
Date: Sep 25, 2021 to Apr 24, 2022
Detail: The present exhibition provides an overview of the Sino-European maritime trade in porcelain during the Ming and Qing dynasties. Integrating object display with textual records as well as images from history, it features over 400 pieces (sets) of trade porcelains and related objects from the Art Museum, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and other public and private collections. We aim to reconstruct the design, manufacture, transport, and sale processes of Chinese export porcelain and their use and impact in overseas markets, and we invite visitors to travel with us back in time and across the globe to see how Ming and Qing porcelain came to dominate the international market and how it profoundly impacted the porcelain industry of the world. The exhibition is organised in six sections: Encountering Oriental Wonders, Thriving Country of China, Manufacture and Transport of Porcelain, Braving the Ocean Waves, International Fashions, and Profound Impact of Chinaware.
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Golden shells and the gentle mastery of Japanese lacquer
Place: NGV International, Level 1, The Pauline Gandel Gallery of Japanese Art - Melbourne, 180 Saint Kilda Road, Australia
Date: Nov 25, 2021 to Apr 18, 2022
Detail: The beauty and artistry of the historical Japanese ‘shell matching’ game kai-awase is celebrated in a new exhibition at the centre of which is a contemporary 720-piece set commissioned by Melbourne philanthropist Dr Pauline Gandel AC. Comprising two Japanese lacquerware shell boxes and 720 gilded clam-shaped shells, each decorated with hand-painted Japanese and Australian flowers, this new edition of the game is the only complete example known to be in existence and provides audiences with a rare opportunity to admire the craftsmanship behind this centuries-old pastime.
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Admiration of Ceramics from South China in Japan
Place: Tokyo National Museum - Tokyo, 13-9 Ueno Park, Taito-ku, Japan
Date: Dec 21, 2021 to Feb 20, 2022
Detail: For over 1,000 years, from the late 10th to the early 20th century, ceramics for both local use and export have been produced in what are now Fujian and Guangdong provinces. The kilns in this area of South China were privately owned, producing ceramics with a robust and casual quality.

In Japan, the upper classes used these ceramics in daily life and for ceremonial preparations of powdered and leaf tea. Inspired by these ceramics, potters in 18th-century Kyoto began reproducing them at their own kilns.

This exhibition looks at the allure of these ceramics from South China and explores how they influenced the aesthetic tastes of people in Japan.

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Fairs

USA & Canada

Europe & Africa | Asia

The Winter Show 2022
Place: Park Avenue Armory - New York, 643 Park Ave, New York, USA
Date: Jan 21, 2022 to Jan 30, 2022
Detail: The Winter Show is the leading art, antiques, and design fair in America, featuring 69 of the world’s top experts in the fine and decorative arts from ancient times to the present day. The Winter Show is an annual benefit for East Side House Settlement, a community-based organization serving the Bronx and Northern Manhattan. The Winter Show maintains the highest standards of quality in the art market, and each object is vetted for authenticity, date, and condition by a committee of 120 experts from the United States and Europe.

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The Virtual Edition of the 36th Annual San Francisco Tribal & Textile Art Show
Place: Virtual - San Francisco, California, USA
Date: Feb 18, 2022 to Feb 28, 2022
Detail: The Virtual Edition of the 36th Annual San Francisco Tribal & Textile Art Show, one of the most important tribal art fairs in the world, is known for showcasing exceptional tribal art and textiles, including many rare and unique pieces from Africa, Asia, Australia, Oceania, and the Americas. Over 50 national and international galleries and exhibitors will offer museum-quality objects and artifacts, making this the perfect event for collectors and enthusiasts alike. This show is free, opening Saturday, February 19, 2022 at 10:00 AM PST and remaining open until Monday, February 28, 2022 at 12 midnight PST.

Te the first to see what's on offer at the 36th Annual San Francisco Tribal & Textile Art Show by attending the Virtual Benefit Preview on February 18, 2022 from 9 AM to 4 PM PST. Tickets $25
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Asia Week New York 2022
Place: Throughout metropolitan New York - New York, USA
Date: Mar 16, 2022 to Mar 25, 2022
Detail: Asia Week New York is an annual weeklong celebration of Asian art throughout metropolitan New York, with non-stop exhibitions, auctions and special events presented by leading international Asian art specialists, major auction houses, and world-renowned museums and cultural institutions.

Asia Week New York is the premier destination for Asian art collectors, curators, scholars and enthusiasts.
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Europe & Africa

USA & Canada | Asia

TEFAF Maastricht
Place: MECC Maastricht - Maastricht, Forum 100, Netherlands
Date: Mar 12, 2022 to Mar 20, 2022
Detail: TEFAF is pleased to present a special 35th anniversary edition of its annual fair in Maastricht in March 2022. This anniversary marks an exciting opportunity to once again bring together over 275 esteemed dealers to showcase 7,000 years of art.

From the moment the fair first opened its doors in 1988 at the MECC in Maastricht, TEFAF has been dedicated to presenting the world’s finest art—across categories—under one roof. What began as a radical idea for a new fair model has transformed into “the greatest fair in the world,” according to one of TEFAF’s first exhibitors, Old Master dealer Johnny van Haeften. A commitment to excellence, rigorous vetting standards, and an unparalleled collecting experience have remained constant in TEFAF’s journey to today.

TEFAF Maastricht promises to be a momentous occasion for the global art world to connect, collect, and celebrate again in person. We look forward to welcoming collectors and art lovers to Maastricht and sharing TEFAF with you in 2022.

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Auctions

USA & Canada

Europe & Africa | Asia

Fabian Chinese Paintings Part IV
Place: Bonhams - New York, 580 Madison Avenue, USA
Date: Mar 21, 2022
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Chinese Works of Art
Place: Bonhams - New York, 580 Madison Avenue, USA
Date: Mar 21, 2022
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Asian Works of Art
Place: Doyle - New York, 175 East 87th Street, USA
Date: Mar 21, 2022
Detail: Doyle will hold an auction of Asian Works of Art on Monday, March 21, 2022 at 10am. Scheduled during Asia Week New York 2022, this highly-anticipated sale presents the arts of China, Japan and elsewhere in Asia dating from the Neolithic Period through the 20th century. Showcased will be porcelains, bronzes, jades, snuff bottles, pottery, scholar’s objects, furniture and paintings from prominent collections and estates.

Exhibition Dates:
Fri, Mar 1812pm – 5pm
Sat, Mar 1912pm – 5pm
Sun, Mar 2012pm – 5pm

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Indian, Himalayan and Southeast Asian Art
Place: Bonhams - New York, 580 Madison Avenue, USA
Date: Mar 22, 2022
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Indian, Himalayan and Southeast Asian Works of Art
Place: Christie’s - New York, 20 Rockefeller Plaza, USA
Date: Mar 23, 2022
Detail: Works from across India, the Himalayas, and Southeast Asia, including a large and impressive selection of Indian court paintings.

Auction times
23 Mar 08:30 AM (EDT)
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South Asian Modern + Contemporary Art
Place: Christie’s - New York, 20 Rockefeller Plaza, USA
Date: Mar 23, 2022
Detail: South Asian Modern + Contemporary Art Including Works from the Collection of Mahinder and Sharad Tak.

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Rivers and Mountains Far from the World: Important Chinese Snuff Bottles from the Rachelle R. Holden Collection
Place: Christie’s - New York, 20 Rockefeller Plaza, USA
Date: Mar 24, 2022
Detail: Highlights include an extremely rare and important imperial famille rose-enameled glass snuff bottle, Qianlong mark and of the period (1736-1795), formerly from the Zhang Tungyu Collection, Shanghai, as well as a superb Yixing slip-decorated snuff bottle, 1750-1830, from the collections of Lila S. Perry and Bob C. Stevens, and a magnificent and masterfully carved black and white jade snuff bottle, Suzhou school, 1740-1850.

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Asia

USA & Canada | Europe & Africa

Dawn of Spring: Chinese Paintings Online
Place: Christie’s - Central, 22nd Floor, Alexandra House, 18 Chater Road, Hong Kong
Date: Feb 14, 2022 to Feb 28, 2022
Detail: Online auction 21023

Offers a selection of paintings and calligraphy ranging from Classical and Modern to the Contemporary period.

Viewing:
14 Feb 10:30 AM – 5:30 PM
15 Feb 10:30 AM – 5:30 PM
16 Feb 10:30 AM – 5:30 PM
17 Feb 10:30 AM – 5:30 PM
18 Feb 10:30 AM – 5:30 PM
19 Feb 10:30 AM – 5:30 PM
21 Feb 10:30 AM – 5:30 PM
22 Feb 10:30 AM – 5:30 PM
23 Feb 10:30 AM – 5:30 PM
24 Feb 10:30 AM – 5:30 PM
25 Feb 10:30 AM – 5:30 PM
26 Feb 10:30 AM – 5:30 PM
28 Feb 10:30 AM – 2:00 PM

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