Support the museum when you buy something lovely at Saks San Francisco.

Perhaps you need a new frock for our Phantoms of Asia opening gala; maybe you just need a trip to the store. This February, you can indulge in retail therapy AND help your favorite arts organization (that’s us, right?). For the month of February, 2012, Saks Fifth Avenue will give 5% of all registered purchases made with a Saks Fifth Avenue credit card back to charity.  The donations will benefit local organizations, keeping support within each Saks Fifth Avenue store’s immediate community. Saks San Francisco has chosen four arts organizations–including the Asian Art Museum–to be part of this program.

“Saks Fifth Avenue is committed to our local communities. We appreciate our customers’ charitable involvement and look forward to giving back locally with this exciting and newly implemented national program,” Steve Sadove, Chairman and CEO, Saks Incorporated, said.

Whatever you’re shopping for, you can select an organization to allocate your 5% contribution to; we hope you choose us! Registration is one simple step when you check out, and will link your customer account with your chosen organization.

We’d like to thank Saks for including us in this initiative.

DISCLAIMER

APPLICABLE SAKS FIFTH AVENUE CREDIT CARD PURCHASES. PURCHASES AT LOUIS VUITTON AND FUR SALON ARE EXCLUDED. PARTICIPANTS MUST BE REGISTERED SAKS CARD HOLDERS AND SELECT FROM ONE OF THE PARTNERING CHARITIES. CUSTOMERS ENROLLMENT AND DESIGNATION IS FINAL. SPEND WILL BE CAPTURED FROM 2/1/12 – 2/29/12 AUTOMATICALLY AND ALL SPEND DURING THIS PERIOD WILL COUNT FOR THE PROMOTION REGARDLESS OF ENROLLMENT DATE. HSBC IS NOT INVOLVED WITH THE SELECTION OF THE CHARITABLE ORGANIZATIONS. PROGRAM COMMENCES AS OF THE DATE FEBRUARY 1, 2012 AND SHALL END FEBRUARY 29, 2012.

New Year is no exception. I celebrated new year recently with a friend for whom sour cream and cheddar chips are an integral part of the evening. He also cooked us a Chinese roast duck; much closer to my ideal celebration.

We spoke to a couple of Bay Area experts about two specialties that are close to us at the museum: Japanese mochi and Buddha hands.

Last weekend, we celebrated the new year here at the museum with mochitsuki (mochi pounding). Local Japanese teacher Yoko Hara writes:

I am from Tokyo, but I’ve never seen mochitsuki there. We bought freshly made big square mochi (Tokyo style) and my father used to cut it into small rectangular pieces. So mochitsuki by Kagamikai was a surprise and delight.
We used to live pretty close to the old site of Asian Art Museum so when my children were still young, we used to enjoy the mochitsuki with Taiko drumming every year. Being a Japanese Teacher, I now spread the word about this lovely event to all my students and friends.

Buddha’s hand has become a common sight at Heart of the City Farmers’ Market, which takes place on Wednesdays and Sundays right behind the museum. Former curator Terese Bartholomew, now a board member of the San Francisco Botanical Garden, shares her knowledge of this funny-looking cousin of the lemon:

One interesting citrus that has appeared in the farmers’ markets in recent years is the Buddha’s hand citron (Citrus medica ‘Sarcodactylis’). This yellow citron with wavy tentacles takes its common name from the shape of its fruit, which resembles the idealized fingers of the Buddha. This fragrant fruit is used as an altar offering during Chinese New Year. The fruit runs completely to rind, and is not edible unless preserved with salt or sugar. Sliced into pieces, the fruit can be prepared the same way as candied citron; dipped in chocolate, these make a most delicious snack. The Buddha’s hand citron is beloved by the Chinese because its name, foshou, puns with blessings and longevity.

Tell us what’s on your Lunar New Year table – or share your recipes for Buddha’s hands.

Why? Great question. Be The Match approached the museum because they have a shortage of South Asian donors in their registry. Bay Area entrepreneur Amit Gupta shared his experience:

Two weeks ago I got a call from my doctor because I’d been feeling worn out and was losing weight, and wasn’t sure why. He was brief: “Amit, you’ve got acute leukemia. You need to enter treatment right away.” I have a couple more months of chemo to go, and then the next step is a bone marrow transplant. Minorities are severely underrepresented in the bone marrow pool, and I need help.

With the Maharaja exhibition in full swing and Sanjay Patel’s show opening next week, the museum is quite a hub for South Asian cultural happenings right now. Be The Match thought it would be a great opportunity to reach out to the South Asian community, and we agreed.

Volunteers from Be The Match will be at the museum from 11:00 am until 3:00 pm this Sunday, November 6. No matter what your background, Be The Match would be grateful for your participation! For more information on what’s involved, check out Be The Match’s ‘Understanding your Commitment’ page.

Remember, admission to the museum this Sunday is free, so come see some art, and maybe save a life as well.

Boy at Writing Desk. Japan, Edo Period (1615–1868). Netsuke; ivory. Transfer from the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Gift of Mr. Ney Wolfskill, B81Y93.

We recently received the following letter from Mike Thompson, a friend of the museum who is teaching English near Tokyo. He has given us permission to share it. The letter speaks to the rebuilding that must occur within the heart after a major tragedy such as Japan has experienced.

************************

Hello Friends,

I would like to update you on the situation in Japan. The radiation danger is still present, but our lives have returned to something approaching normal. My friend Tom Gally has a web site where he has been culling the Japanese news outlets and translating them into English for his family and friends, and he said I could give out his link. His sources are better than mine, and he has links to other web sites with earthquake / tsunami / nuclear recovery information. His page has his daily routine for his family members to read, but also general information about post-disaster Tokyo that might be interesting (I met Tom in the student dormitory at UCSB many years ago, and now he teaches at the University of Tokyo):

http://www.gally.net/updates/index.html

Along with milk and spinach, now add cauliflower, broccoli, most leafy green vegetables and tap water to the radioactive contamination list! Bottled water is being rationed and distributed to families with infants. Nobody really knows how far the fallout from the Fukushima reactors will spread, or how long this will go on. The news can be depressing. Some workers have been hospitalized for radiation sickness. As the death toll climbs, individual stories are coming up in discussions with friends and colleagues—A 24-year-old American woman who was a schoolteacher in Fukushima drowned. A bus with kindergarten children was caught in the tsunami and the children died, but the bus driver was swept onto the roof of a two-story building and lived. But then there is this—a grandmother and her grandson were rescued from the wreckage of their house nine days after the earthquake. And we are hearing about babies that were miraculously born in the midst of the deluge and survived.

Today was a good day. I attended the graduation ceremony for sixth graders at Haijima #1 Elementary School in Akishima where I’m the English teacher. It was refreshingly happy: 79 kids I’ve known for four years with scrubbed faces, wearing new clothes and junior high school uniforms, loud voices, singing and crying. But the speeches from the principal and the board of education official were somber, and poignant. They noted that other kids in northern Japan have no school buildings left in which to hold their graduation ceremonies, to say nothing of the children of the same age who were lost in the tsunami. The population of Japan is shrinking, and the next generation is the nation’s most precious resource. You children face an enormous challenge, we are counting on you … words to that effect. The speeches were also was a kind of pep talk reminding the students that Japan as a nation has faced and overcome adversity in the past. Do your best. Be happy.

Graduations in Japan are very formal affairs—in fact most ceremonies in Japan are formal. Men wear black suits with white shirts and WHITE NECKTIES! Some mothers of children and teachers were wearing kimonos, and one teacher wore a hakama, a very traditional, formal kimono reserved for graduations, weddings, meeting the emperor, or winning the Nobel Prize. The fifth-grade students attend the ceremony, and all of them play the graduation theme “Pomp and Circumstance” on recorder flutes as the graduates march into the school gym that is decorated in red and white, auspicious colors. Each graduate’s name is called out and they receive their diplomas on stage. They sing the school song (one student played the piano, quite well). Then the fifth graders shout out a very scripted “THANK YOU!” and the sixth graders sing a tearjerker SAYONARA song to them, and everybody weeps. We all go outside in the warm sunshine and pose for pictures and laugh and smile with parents and kids, and say goodbye. The new school year starts in April, and the new sixth graders will lead the school entrance ceremony—I just love this—where the older kids carry the first graders on their backs into the same gym, now decorated with paper cherry blossom flowers. At my daughter’s school they had a trust-building event in summer where the older kids form a human chain across the nearby Tama River, and one by one the little kids are helped to cross the moving water.

Today was a beautiful spring day in Tokyo. I felt emotional thinking of what has happened here in the past two weeks, the tremendous loss of life, lost cities and towns, but next month I start a new school year and meet new kids for the first time, and I get the privilege of making memories.

I’ll close with some lyrics that I remembered. Surfing the Internet these days, I came across the No Nukes rock concert from more than a decade ago. by Musicians United for Sane Energy. An understated but powerful sentiment in Japan is a strong reaction against the use of any atomic power at all by many people, especially the older generation. Among the musicians performing at the concert was Jackson Browne, a songwriter I like (my bandmate called him “America’s favorite crybaby!”). I remember his song “For A Dancer” that says:

Keep a fire for the human race
Let your prayers go drifting into space
You never know what will be coming down

Perhaps a better world is drawing near
And just as easily it could all disappear
Along with whatever meaning you might have found

Don’t let the uncertainty turn you around
Go on and make a joyful sound

At least today, I heard a joyful sound from the children, and it was a good day for me in Japan, my adopted home.

—Mike Thompson

I emailed all of our docents and storytellers today with some suggestions as to how they might be prepared for questions about Japan’s disaster in their interactions with visitors. I suggested that, when appropriate, they incorporate into their tours information about the recent earthquake and tsunami and Japan’s unique geography, which has been shaped by geothermal thrusts and volcanoes over many millennium. Japan, being an archipelago, has a culture inextricably intertwined with the sea. The Japanese are among the world’s greatest (and most voracious) fisher-folk. They have a tradition of landscape art in which nature is refined to its most idealized expression, and a religion focused on nature spirits–Shinto. Think of the meisho-e, or pictures of famous places, and of images of plum trees or streams abstracted into patterns of gold and line. And yet, behind the beauty of Japanese art is the reality of a cruel, impersonal natural world. Today thousands suffer and have perished in a natural disaster in Japan from which it will take many years to recover.

Mount Fuji and the beach at Miho no Matsubara

I advised our docents and storytellers to show our visitors the impacted areas using the maps in the galleries. Some helpful information about the earthquake and tsunami may be found on the BBC news site:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12722187

BBC also have an animated guide about how tsunamis happen
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7533972.stm

For those who wish to find out how to help, NPR has a full listing of agencies working in Japan:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/03/14/134532391/crisis-in-japan-heres-how-to-help

Japan Society has created a disaster relief fund to aid victims of the earthquake. More details can be found at this link: http://www.japansociety.org/news

This is the link to the Red Cross’ Japan Tsunami relief:
http://www.redcross.org/

We hope for the end to the suffering of our friends in Japan.

The museum is proud to host the participants in the 2011 National Chinese Language Conference organized by the Asia Society Partnership for Global Learning and the College Board in collaboration with the SF-based Mandarin Institute. The conference takes place April 14-16, 2011 at the Hilton, and our event is the evening of April 15.

Conference attendees include language teachers from all over the US, and they will be coming to the museum for an evening reception and showcase of our galleries and programs, including stories told in our galleries in Chinese by High School students of Chinese to elementary grade immersion program students.

The theme of the conference is: Connect, Innovate, and Lead!

Teachers will explore how:

• Technology and Innovation are changing the way our students learn language and engage in international collaboration.
• A World-Class Education is preparing the next generation in the U.S. and China for an interconnected future.
• Best Practices and New Directions are guiding quality instruction and enhancing student achievement.
• K–12 and Higher Education can collaborate on articulation, teacher preparation, and research.

They are accepting session proposals and registrations now at

http://sites.asiasociety.org/nclc2011/conference/

Something I’ve noticed about the Zhang Huan sculpture in Civic Center: it serves as an excellent meeting place.  If you tell your friends to wait for you in Civic Center, they’ll often be found fifteen minutes later, standing in U.N. Plaza.  If you tell them to meet you next to the massive, multi-armed statue, there’s little room for error.
In case you weren’t in the neighborhood last Saturday, the sculpture in the plaza was the meeting place for several hundred participants of Santarchy (aka Santacon).  My thanks to everyone for making my Saturday, it never quite feels like the holidays until I see this thoroughly San Francisco phenomenon.

But make no mistake, although the event originated here, we don’t keep the fun for ourselves.  Tokyo, Beijing, Singapore, Okinawa, Seoul–even Manama, Bahrain–all host their very own versions of Santarchy.  Hopefully no one got run over by any reindeer or naughty elves last Saturday.  Did anyone spot the Santas in the Museum on Saturday?

Bull vessel for cremation

Before the museum blog started I created the Bali Art Blog to post about my trip to Bali and progress on our Bali exhibition. I was reviewing some of the comments there and thought this one would be of interest to the readers of the museum’s blog about the question of whether the museum should commission funerary arts as props for our exhibition. Gus Dark wrote:

please stop playing the sacred art with contemporary art which will causing Young generation in Bali or other place will misunderstanding or misinterpreter it, until the art itself losing it meaning, losing it sacred and “magical feeling” or we Balinese call it “TAKSU”. Feel free to search and create something new based on Balinese art but please don’t put the sacred art into modern or street art things, these arts have their own place… and we all have to respect it. thank you for your concerning about bali, I love Bali and Bali will always loves you..

We talked to lots of folks about the idea of commissioning a bull-shaped coffin used in Balinese cremations for display in the exhibition. We are borrowing an impressive, carved wooden cremation platform, which was never used, and thought we needed to complete it by having the bull inside. In the photo above the platform is very tall with white columns. It usually is burned with everything else in the cremation. While it certainly would have been possible to have an artist create a bull coffin, we decided not to go ahead with this on the advice of our Balinese advisory committee who shared similar sentiments to Gus. One person said that it was not a good idea to create a coffin unless you had a body to go into it. Makes a lot of sense, don’t you think?

Work on the videos for the Bali exhibition are in full court press at the moment. I have been working with video editors Michael Rohde (SF based) to develop six videos to play in the gallery spaces and short clips for the handheld media tour,  and Martin Percy (London based) to create an interactive video kiosk. Why are we going so heavy on video with this exhibition? The key reason is our desire to convey in an immersive way the integration of art, ritual, and performance in Bali. Today we trekked out to Richmond to interview local dancer Kompiang Metri Davies. We asked her to wear her traditional Balinese temple best for the camera, but when the interview was done she had changed back into her regular around-the-house outfit of Indian looking tunic and slacks. Kompiang told us about her memories growing up in Ngis, a remote village in eastern Bali, how she came to learn dance (despite her parents’ resistance), symbolism of the various pieces of Balinese dance costume, how the mask dances frightened her as a child, dancers entering trance state, the simple bull-shaped coffins made in her village for cremation, and about making daily offerings. You may hear excerpts of her interview in the audio tour and on the introductory video. She will perform purification dances on opening day Feb. 25 and a mother-daughter dance work on Mother’s Day family festival on May 8, 2011.

Willie Mays & Joe DiMaggio at the Asian Art Museum in Golden Gate Park

Every morning on my way to work, I cast a glance at City Hall to remind myself that I’m not dreaming.  The Giants flags still fly, the banners proclaiming victory remain, and the Lone Star flag that once flew above Civic Center Plaza has yet to be replaced, an irresistible target for fans.
The air has been a little sweeter, the populace friendlier.  Upon the heels of history, reminiscing is in order.

On the morning of the Giants Victory Parade, our museum’s librarian deduced that I was a Giants fan (an orange scarf that didn’t leave my neck for at least a month might have tipped him off).
“Did you know that when the Japanese Emperor visited San Francisco, he made a special request that Wilie Mays and Joe DiMaggio be invited to a dinner held in his honor at the old museum?” he asked, with a glint in his eye, knowing this stuff is gold to historians and baseball fans.

“I’m sure there’s a photo somewhere in the archives.”

Emperor Akihito, Mayor Frank Jordan, & Empress Michiko in front of the treasure wall

It’s no secret that baseball is a unifying factor between Japan and the U.S., and that San Francisco is ground zero for baseball diplomacy.  The now-Yomiuri Giants were named the Tokyo Giants in 1935 by City native and baseball great Lefty O’Doul.  The first post-WWII goodwill games played between the San Francisco Seals and Japanese All-Star teams were essential to normalizing relations between the two countries.
Curiously enough, it was baseball that nearly caused a breach in those tenuous relations, when in 1964 the Nankai Hawks sent Masanori Murakami and a couple other players to practice with the Giants’ minor league team in Fresno.  The managers liked Murakami’s pitching style–he was a young, powerful left-handed reliever–and took advantage of a loophole to send him to the San Francisco Giants, making him the first Japanese player to sign with a Major League Baseball team.

Antagonism and bad press over the sneaky deal reached such a pitch that the Japanese baseball commissioner was called in to mollify East and West: Murakami would finish out the 1965 season with the Giants before returning home to Japan.

Nowadays, Japanese players on MLB teams aren’t novelties, and are acquired in more aboveboard means.  We share the favor in the process of suketto, or extra help, by allowing U.S. players to aid Japanese leagues.

Somewhere, I’m told, there’s a photograph of the Emperor, Mays, and DiMaggio.
Should it surface, expect an update.  In the meantime, let’s enjoy this solidarity in orange.

The party in our front yard: everyone was invited!