Who Let the Dogs Out?

With the close of Poetry in Clay on January 8, the Asian Art Museum’s Korean galleries have once again become a work in progress. A collection of old friends — ceramic and metal works from the museum’s collection — are on their way back.

The reinstalled gallery will re-open this weekend, so be sure to take a moment to revisit your favorite Korean works.

But in addition to works from the collection, we have another treat on view. When the museum opened at Civic Center back in 2003, the Korean artist Cho Duk-Hyun excavated a pack of dogs on museum grounds as part of the Eureka project. Ten of these dogs were later given to the museum. As part of the Korean gallery reinstallation, we’ve let these dogs out of their storage crate for a brief romp. You can check the pups out and watch a video documenting their unearthing starting January 28.

Museum photographer Kaz Tsuruta photographs each dog on its way to the gallery.

Bonus Quiz: There are nine dogs in the gallery but ten in the pack that was given to the museum. Can you guess where doggy number ten is? Put your answer in the comments below.

Curator of Korean Art Hyonjeong Kim Han, registrar Cathy Mano, and exhibition manager Kelly Bennett wrangle Cho Duk-Hyun's dogs into the Korean gallery alcove.

Why We’re Giving Thanks

As we head off for the Thanksgiving holidays, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on what we at the museum have to be thankful for: our wonderful donors, members and supporters. I received this note from one of our registrars (and regular blog contributors), Cristina, who was looking at a list of recent acquisitions:

In particular I would call out one object on the list: a screen titled Sun and Autumn Plants. I think that this is a wonderful example of a recent gift because not only did the donor give us, in the name of her family, this beloved screen that had been in her home for many decades (she was downsizing to a senior community) but she also donated funds to pay for a complete conservation treatment and remounting of the screen. Next year we will send it to a traditional Japanese mounter located in New York who will conserve and entirely remount it – a process that will take about 18 months. Because of the specialist labor and materials involved, remounting is quite expensive and something we cannot frequently do. Once remounted, this work will be ready for display and will also be in better condition to survive many more decades.

We want to acknowledge all who have contributed in some way, large or small, to our community. If you are a member, don’t forget to take advantage of our special offer for members through November 27. It’s our small way of saying thanks.

Bali, the Final Post

For museum visitors, the exhibition Bali: Art, Performance, Ritual closed on September 11, more than two months ago. But for me, the Bali exhibition has only recently truly ended. As the registrar charged with ensuring the safe travel of the exhibition objects, I can’t call my job done until the last object has been safely returned home.

Objects from Bali: Art, Ritual, Performance are deinstalled following the close of the exhibition.

Most of the objects in Bali were borrowed from lenders in the Netherlands. Returning these works was therefore quite a journey.

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Bringing you Bali

If you’ve been to the museum lately, you might be wondering what is occurring behind the screens and beneath the newly darkened ceiling outside of our first floor galleries.

Here is what’s happening: we’re bringing Bali to you! Museum exhibition staff have been busy unpacking loans, condition checking objects, arranging cases, and even building a Balinese pavilion under our own roof.

We still have two weeks  until the exhibition opens to the public, but here’s a quick peek of what we’re doing between now and then.

Senior Registrar Sharon Steckline checks up on a set of gold earrings, held secure with their new custom mounts.

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On the Silk Road at the American Museum of Natural History

The Asian Art Museum often provides loans from our collection to other museums for permanent gallery display (see my May 7  blog and for special exhibitions. Sometimes the borrowing institution travels these exhibitions on to other museums. We recently lent several objects to an exhibition on the Silk Road at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

This exhibition is presented in a different manner than an exhibition at the Asian would. The exhibition at the AMNH takes you along the world’s oldest international highway, on a voyage that spans six centuries (AD 600-1200). It showcases four representative cities: Xi’an, China’s Tang Dynasty capital; Turfan, a bustling oasis; Samarkand, home of prosperous merchants; and Baghdad, a meeting place for scholars, scientists, and philosophers.

The exhibition at the AMNH is now closed, but will be traveling to four additional museums outside the United States. The Art Science Museum, Singapore, December 20, 2010 – April 3, 2011 The National Museum of Natural Science, Taichung, Taiwan, June 11 – September 11, 2011 The National Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, Taipei, Taiwan, October 29, 2011 – January 29, 2012 and The National Museum of Australia, Canberra, Australia, March 31- September 1, 2012 We are also adding one additional object to the exhibition which is being packed right now.

AMNH loan being packed

This piece is a three-footed plate of glazed earthenware from China and is Tang dynasty (618-906).

Beyond Golden Clouds out the door

2011 is here and with it comes some goodbyes. For the past three months, museum visitors have been treated to the beauty and elegance of the painted screens (as well as more modern mixed media interpretations) featured in Beyond Golden Clouds: Five Centuries of Japanese Screens. However it’s time to move on into another year of exciting exhibitions, so this past week we carefully packed up these masterworks and sent them home to the Art Institute of Chicago and the Saint Louis Art Museum. Taking down a gallery is typically faster than installing the artworks initially, but still requires a great deal of coordination, patience, care, and reverence for these awesome works.

One of Jiro Okura's Mountain Lake screens is packed. Because of their great weight and the delicately affixed gold leaf surface, these screens present unique handling and transportation challenges.

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The Asian Art Museum travels on the Silk Road

The Asian Art Museum often provides loans from our collection to other museums for permanent gallery display (see my May 7 blog entry about lending to the San Antonio Museum of Art) and for special exhibitions.  Sometimes the borrowing institution travels these exhibitions on to other museums.  This past summer, we lent several objects to an exhibition titled The Silk Road – Ancient Pathway to the Modern World organized by the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York.

"The Silk Road" at AMNH (image courtesy American Museum of Natural History)

Since this is a natural history museum, the show was presented in a very different manner than an exhibition at the Asian would be.
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Installing Japanese Screens

The Beyond Golden Clouds: Five Centuries of Japanese Screens exhibition has arrived from halfway across the country — the St. Louis Art Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago. Staff from each institution were required to accompany the shipments by riding on long-haul trucks for well over 40 hours. We are now installing the exhibition and the screens, and the galleries are really lovely. One of the most exciting pieces is contemporary, the From the Mountain Lake Screen Tachi Series by Okura Jiro; the screens in this series have gold foil pieces attached to them, and they leave some tiny pieces of gold foil in their wake. This is not normally what we like to see, but the artist created these screens with the intention of seeing them deteriorate over the years.

In a true collaboration, both lenders have portions of the screen and we have placed them together, and they are fantastic. The screens are a wonderful mixture of traditional and contemporary and I look forward to the public will be able to see them on Oct. 15.

Asian Art in San Antonio

I recently returned from a site visit to the San Antonio Museum of Art (SAMA) where we have some loans from our collection that we have been checking each year.  I feel a strong connection to SAMA because it was the first loan I coordinated when I first began working at the Asian in 1991.

Rear view of the San Antonio Museum of Art (SAMA)

The Asian has had loans from our permanent collection on view at the San Antonio Museum of Art (SAMA) since February 1992. At that time SAMA, which opened their doors in 1981 in the remodeled historic Lone Star Brewery complex, had a collection of Asian Art which they supplemented by borrowing additional pieces for display.

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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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