Somewhere a Shanghai garden grows

"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.

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Shanghai update

Whew! Our first week of installation for Shanghai is over, and week two is about to begin. All of the objects have arrived safely and the galleries are beginning to really take shape. The exhibition crew has been busy condition checking artwork, hanging paintings, dressing mannequins, and dealing with all of the assorted surprises that emerge with a project of this complexity. Here a few behind the scenes images from the past week.

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

Shanghai sneak peek – Qipao

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.

Shanghai remodeling

With Shanghai right around the corner, museum preparation staff have been busy reconfiguring the museum in ways we haven’t quite seen before.

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.

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Shanghai film clips

My homework this week is scanning old Chinese movies for interesting clips of Shanghai for possible screening in the exhibition. The exhibition curator Michael Knight was given a stack of DVDs from a Chinese contact with permission to use. (I think they are all in the public domain).

乌鸦与麻雀 / Crows and Sparrows poster (1949)

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“Tory Rory” Stewart is still walking

During the Afghanistan exhibition last year, we hosted a lecture by Rory Stewart (available for your viewing pleasure on YouTube and iTunesU), who is perhaps best known around the museum for his book about his walk across Afghanistan called The Places in Between.

Rory Stewart views the Afghan exhibition at the Asian Art Museum in 2008

I was surprised to learn he is running as a Tory to serve as Member of Parliament to represent the English district of Penrith and The Border, a beautiful, remote, and recently flood-plagued region along the England/Scotland border. He has written an amusing yet thoughtful account of his campagning, done, you guessed it, by walking the district and meeting people along the route, including “a lurcher called Prospero.” Those of you who read The Places in Between may be reminded of another great dog, Babur. If elected he hopes to narrow the “gap between government rhetoric and reality from Britain to Baghdad. . . . and help change the culture of government.” Good luck Rory. 

Shanghai audiotour with Joan Chen

Asian Art Museum director Jay Xu (center) with his wife Jennifer (left) actress Joan Chen (right). Photo by Catherine Bigelow

It’s one of those pinch-me-is-this-for-real? moments: today I was sending an email to Joan Chen, yes THAT Joan Chen–the super talented and gorgeous film star and director. I think the first movie I saw her in was The Last Emperor and the most recent was Lust, Caution, much of which was set in Shanghai. Those two mega movies bookend an incredibly interesting career that still has lots of surprises in store. Checking out her filmography on Wikipedia I was delighted to note she starred in an episode of Homicide: Life on the Street, set in the lovely (no sarcasm intended) city of Baltimore (”Ball-more” for many natives), near where I grew up. Homicide used to be my favorite TV show so now I will be hunting this episode down. Did you know she also played Josie Packard in David Lynch’s TV series Twin Peaks?

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A little holiday travel cheer

The holidays are upon us and that means one thing — many hours spent braving the timeless monotony of airport terminals. But for those of you flying through San Francisco International Airport this season, we’ve got a special treat for your weary eyes. You see, there is a little project that we’ve been working on behind-the-scenes.

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.
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Art Making Hour with the Whole Family

One of my favorite memories from childhood is about a clay project my family and I did after a memorable visit to a local museum’s Picasso ceramics exhibition (this was when I had no idea who PICASSO was). We (mostly my mom) carefully extracted whole skeleton from a fish and made impression on a slab of clay and made it into a shallow dish. My mother’s colleague fired it in a kiln for us, and she inaugurated it by having a fish dish in it that night. I soon graduated to making ashtrays by myself, and those simple art projects with my mother set me on the path of enjoying making art (and now I know who Picasso was).

Here are some of the samples of art activities from the museum’s awesome Education team. My current favorites are Japanese Teahouse and Thai Spirit House making, since they appeal to my sense of accomplishment. For more fun activities, please see the museum’s family program page.

Enjoy!

Sneak Peek: Bali in Amsterdam

Greetings from the land of cheese and chocolate — Amsterdam. Most of our visitors probably are asking, “Why are staff from the Asian Art Museum in Amsterdam”? Well, I’m here, along with objects conservator Mark Fenn and Associate Curator of Southeast Asian Art Natasha Reichle, planning for the first ever U.S. exhibition of Balinese art.

The exhibition, Bali: Art, Ritual, Performance, will open at the museum in February 2011. But like many of our exhibitions, years of work are needed to ensure that it is a spectacular success.

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