Hidden Meanings: Symbolism in Chinese Art at San Francisco International Airport (photo courtesy San Francisco Airport Museums).

Beginning this week, more than one hundred objects from the museum’s collection will be featured in the San Francisco International Airport (SFO) exhibition Hidden Meanings: Symbolism in Chinese Art. Based on the work of Asian Art Museum curator emeritus Terese Tse Bartholomew, this exhibition explores auspicious symbols and wish-granting motifs found in Chinese art.

Artwork ready to be packed for transportation to SFO. Some objects, such as this plate, have never been on view.

It’s a pretty cool show featuring incredible works of art and a full serving of puns and general cleverness. While some of the featured objects were on view at the museum in 2006, others are being displayed here for the first time.

Carefully packed objects are loaded onto trucks for the trip to the airport.

Hidden Meanings in Chinese Art is the second in a series of airport exhibitions highlighting objects from the Asian Art Museum. The first exhibition in this group — Later Chinese Jades — will continue to be on view  in SFO’s International Terminal through the weekend of June 5 – 6 (you can listen to some great NPR coverage about this exhibition and others at the airport here).

Museum Senior Registrar Sharon Steckline supervises installation of the artwork in SFO's United Terminal (photo courtesy San Francisco Airport Museums).

Hidden Meanings in Chinese Art will be on view to ticketed passengers only in SFO’s United Terminal until January 2011. For more information about this exhibition, including previews of selected artwork, visit the website of the San Francisco Airport Museums.

(If you’re not traveling, the airport museum website also lists a number of exhibitions that are open to non-ticketed visitors. Especially cool is the show Shanghai: High-Rise Architecture and the Remaking of China’s Gateway to the World. It’s just the thing to get you in the mood for Shanghai at the Asian Art Museum!)

This is a post from: the blog of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. Visit us at www.asianart.org.

Not so hidden after all

We blogged about this upcoming addition to the neighborhood some months ago, and are now thrilled to actually see it going up right outside our doors!

The fifteen ton copper sculpture will officially debut next week, but first it needs to be put together. Because of its size, the sculpture was created and shipped in multiple sections, to be assembled on site.

One of six arms pulls up in front of the museum

Each section must be carefully fitted onto the sculpture’s torso. The bright orange interior armature of the statue is clearly visible in these image, but will be hidden once the sculpture is fully put together.

Moving an arm into alignment

The completed sculpture will be dedicated on Wednesday, May 12, 2010 at 10 a.m. That same evening, the San Francisco Arts Commission and the the Asian Art Museum will present a public program featuring Zhang Huan in conversation with museum director Jay Xu.

Three Heads Six Arms (2008) will be on view through 2011.

This is a post from: the blog of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. Visit us at www.asianart.org.

Art outside our doors

First, newly on view in the South Asian galleries is a recently acquired silver bowl featuring scenes of Zoroastrian rulers. Made in a Burmese silver shop for a well-to-do Parsi family, this impressive bowl measures more than a foot in diameter and was meant for use in an annual ceremony honoring deceased relatives.

Ceremonial bowl with Zoroastrian themes, approx. 1875. Burma. Silver. Acquisition made possible by the Zarthosti Anjuman of Northern California, Rati Forbes, Betty N. Alberts, and members of the board of the Society for Asian Art in honor of Past President Nazneen Spliedt, AAM# 2009.25

The events depicted on this bowl are well known in ancient Persian sculptures. Perhaps most notably, compare this bowl against the famous relief and inscription of Darius I located at the UNESCO World Heritage site of Bisitun.

Inscription and relief of Darius I at Behistun

Also newly on view in the South Asian galleries is a metal plate displaying an elaborate floral decoration. This is an example of the “bidri ware” produced in south-central India using a complex casting, engraving, inlay, and chemical process.

Plate, approx. 1700. India; perhaps Andhra Pradesh state. Zinc alloy with silver and brass inlay. Gift of Martha Davidson in memory of J. LeRoy Davidson, AAM# B86M12

Finally, In the Chinese galleries we just installed a ritual food vessel (gui) dating to the Western Zhou dynasty (1050-771 BCE). This particular vessel has a curious connection to Shanghai. According to curator Michael Knight:

“The inscription on this vessel tells us it was cast for someone named Zhui. A vessel of similar shape and also cast for Zhui appears in the 1892 hand scroll Illustrations of the Antique Collection of Kezhai, on display in the Shanghai special exhibition galleries on the first floor. There are at least four other vessels of the same shape with the same inscription, making it impossible to determine if the piece illustrated in the scroll and this one are the same.”

Ritual food vessel, approx. 900-850 BCE. China. Bronze. The Avery Brundage Collection, AAM# B60B1056

We’ve got lots more objects lined up! Keep an eye on this blog for news of additional gallery changes over the coming months.

This is a post from: the blog of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. Visit us at www.asianart.org.

In the galleries: a few additions

Japanese baskets, newly on view

Most recently we’ve made changes to our Chinese painting display, Japanese basket area, and the second floor Korean gallery. So what might you see on your next visit?

First, the Chinese painting gallery is featuring a collection of landscape paintings, including several works that have never been on view.

Chinese painting gallery. Visible are Kuncan's "The river bend" (dated 1661), AAM# B65D53 and Gong Xian "View of Qixia" (approx. 1670-1689), AAM# B69D54.

Over in the Japanese basket corner, we’ve installed twenty-three new baskets. One of my favorites is Honma Kazuaki’s Streaming Light (Ryuki) (1974), a flowing sculptural work crafted with bamboo taken from the eaves of an old farmhouse.

Streaming Light (Ryuki), 1974. By Honma Kazuaki (Japanese, born 1930). Bamboo and rattan. AAM #2006.3.844.

In the Korean gallery, bojagis have returned and the current selection features some particularly subtle examples. We’ve also rotated our generous loan of photographs of Korean palaces from the collection of the National Museum of Korea.

Korean gallery with Bridal robe by Han Sang-soo (Korean, born 1930), AAM# 2005.65.A, and photographs from the National Museum of Korea

More changes are lined up for the coming weeks, including a new group of Himalayan thangkas, South Asian paintings, and a very special thematic rotation in our Japanese galleries. With all this freshening up, isn’t it time that  you revisited your favorite gallery?

This is a post from: the blog of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. Visit us at www.asianart.org.

Spring rotations

"Vestiges of a Process: Shanghai Garden" during installation.

Shanghai has been up a little more than a week, long enough for a number of media reviews, blog posts, and general discussion points to emerge. One piece that seems to elicit particular comment is Zhang Jian Jun’s installation Vestiges of a Process: Shanghai Garden (2009).

Down in the shadowy basement and back halls of the museum services division, this is known affectionately as the piece with the bricks. Not just your garden variety red clay bricks, but some 3,000 antique grey bricks taken from the remains of buildings dating to the high-times of 1920s Shanghai, recently demolished to pave the way for new construction.

Bricks ready for unpacking.

Of course, bringing over 3,000 bricks from China is not as simple as dropping them off at the post office. Weighting in at over 11,000 pounds, the fifteen crates of individually packed bricks were flown from Shanghai to Los Angeles aboard a cargo plane, and then loaded onto a truck to San Francisco, accompanied by a museum registrar the entire way.

Museum preparators clean the surface of bricks to be stacked.

Because of earthquake concerns, the bricks stacked around the rock platforms needed to be secured against movement. With bricks fresh from a demolition site, this meant carefully cleaning the surfaces of loose debris so that adhesives could bond. As a result, the museum’s preparation team vacuumed a lot of bricks.

Zhang Jian Jun constructs his garden.

Each brick was carefully placed by the artist, who took advantage of the wide expanse of North Court to extend his installation in all directions. The completed work combines all those bricks with two pink silicone rubber scholar’s rocks (taihu), a silicone rubber vase, and tiny bits of artificial greenery emerging from the cracks. It’s an evocative statement about the transition between the city old and new, a theme our visitors will find woven throughout Shanghai.

This is a post from: the blog of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. Visit us at www.asianart.org.

Somewhere a Shanghai garden grows

A detail of the neon tube components of Shen Fan's installation "Landscape—Commemorating Huang Binhong—Small Scroll."

Are they straight or not? Preparator and lighting designer Evan Kierstead hangs two pairs of calligraphy scrolls by Zhao Zhiqian in Osher gallery.

Propaganda posters are prepared for framing in the museum's conservation center.

What’s scheduled for this week? More paintings, ceramic city-scapes and lots and lots of bricks!

This is a post from: the blog of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. Visit us at www.asianart.org.

Shanghai update

From behind the scenes of Shanghai, stylish qipao from the Shanghai History Museum are unpacked for condition checking. A total of five of these body-hugging garments, featuring rich fabrics and art deco inspired motifs, are included in the “High Times” section of the exhibition. First worn by fashionable women in Shanghai during the 1920s and 1930s, the distinctive qipao remains popular today.

This is a post from: the blog of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. Visit us at www.asianart.org.

Shanghai sneak peek – Qipao

Objects selected  for Shanghai include not only the 2-D paintings and works on paper that visitors might expect, but a wide variety of furniture, textile arts, video works, and contemporary installations by leading Shanghai artists. This variety of object types can be a challenge for our designer. In particular, the museum’s existing gallery spaces were not originally designed to fit contemporary installation art or to display video art.

As a result, various spaces around the museum have been receiving substantial Shanghai makeovers.

Windows to north court are covered with new walls to create additional display space.

The entirety of north court — a large open space between the special exhibition galleries that typically hosts education programs and  special events — is now an exhibition space that will be filled with large-scale installation such as Zhang Jian-Jun’s Vestiges of a Process: Shanghai Garden with its thousands of antique Shanghai bricks, and Can You Tell Me, Liu Jianhua’s collection of stainless steel books presenting meditations on Shanghai’s possible futures.

Hamon arcade, with new wall construction in process.

Adjacent to north court, Hamon arcade (the passageway behind the museum store that connects the north and south courts) has undergone structural changes that will allow for the installation of Liu Jianhua’s evocative porcelain cityscape Shadow in the Water.

In order to display  a selection of works by Shaghai artist working in video, the ground floor education resource room has been transformed into a viewing space. School groups will instead now meet in Tateuchi gallery on the second floor, where walls have been created to separate the space from surrounding galleries.

New walls receive a coat of paint in Osher gallery.

The regular special exhibition galleries — Lee, Hambrecht, and Osher — have also undergone major construction with new walls and platforms designed to best display approximately 120 works. Less visible throughout the galleries are more subtle changes, such as electrical upgrades to accommodate powered artworks and a revised flow plan for moving visitors through the new series of gallery spaces.

Crated objects are moved into the exhibition spaces once construction is complete.

All of these changes mean that the entire ground floor of the museum will be alive with art for the next seven months. For our regular visitors, the changes may be a bit disorienting at first. But for many, encountering new art in unanticipated spaces will be a distinctive part of the Shanghai experience.

This is a post from: the blog of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. Visit us at www.asianart.org.

Shanghai remodeling

Jades await condition checking at the San Francisco Airport Museums

Beginning the week of Christmas, the San Francisco Airport Museums (yes, the airport has a fully-accredited museum) will host The Resplendent Stone: Chinese Jades from the 18th-20th Centuries. Drawn from the Asian Art Museum’s extensive jade collection, this is the first of several exhibitions to be produced by the San Francisco Airport Museums with loans from the Asian Art Museum.

Staff from the Asian Art Museum and the San Francisco Airport Museums carefully examine each object upon unpacking.

Many of these jades will be familiar to long-time museum visitors — a number of them were featured in our 2007 exhibition Later Chinese Jades: Ming Dynasty to the Early Twentieth Century. At the airport, these works will now have a chance to bring delight to viewers who might not of had a chance to experience them at the Asian.

The Resplendent Stone will be on view until June 7, 2010 on the south side of the international terminal.

Three sheep, 1900-1911. Nephrite. The Avery Brundage Collection, B60J397. On view in The Resplendent Stone.

Once you’ve had your share of jade, be sure to check out a few of the nearly twenty other exhibitions that can be found throughout the airport. This winter they’ll have shows on everything from vintage pinball machines to ancient Mediterranean pottery to miniature airplanes. It might be just so fascinating, you’ll think—what flight?

This is a post from: the blog of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. Visit us at www.asianart.org.

A little holiday travel cheer

Museum staff enjoy a tour of Emerald Cities with curator Dr. Forrest McGill.

This past Friday, Chief Curator Forrest McGill took the staff of the Asian Art Museum on a tour of Emerald Cities. Such staff tours are a bit of a tradition after each exhibition opening — with all the busy schedules around here it can be surprising hard to find time to actually look at the art!

Guided tours are a great way to experience an exhibition because they are often full of the casual asides and colorful anecdotes that don’t make for official label copy. Friday’s tour included long digressions on the social meaning of footwear in Burma, jovial Thai wordplay, and the always intriguing discussion of what’s with all the silly painted rabbits?

Curators aren’t always on hand to tell these tales, but our fabulous museum docents make equally lively guides and are dying to dish out some juicy details to your waiting ears. We have docent-led 45 minute long tours of Emerald Cities taking place place daily at 12:00 pm and 2:00 pm, and all tours are free with admission. How good a deal is that?

Museum staff, led by Dr. Forrest McGill, admire the mythical goose from Emerald Cities.

This is a post from: the blog of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. Visit us at www.asianart.org.

Have you taken your daily tour?