Forthcoming staff publications

Left to right: Illustration from A History of Chinese Civilization (Ritual vessel ding, approx. 1050–1000 BCE. China, early Western Zhou dynasty. Bronze. Asian Art Museum, The Avery Brundage Collection, B60B2+; photo by Kaz Tsuruta) and covers of Modern China Studies; 1616: The World in Motion; and Along the Yangzi River: Regional Culture of the Bronze Age from Hunan. (See below for larger images.)

Asian Art Museum staff have been busy on the publication front beyond our own upcoming exhibition-related publications such as Phantoms of Asia by assistant curator of contemporary art Allison Harding (with Mami Kataoka of the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo) and Out of Character: Decoding Chinese Calligraphy by senior curator of Chinese art Michael Knight.

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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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UPDATED A Rediscovered Treasure?

UPDATE: The entire backside of the stele has a whole grid of inscribed Chinese characters in very legible clerical script.

detail of back side

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If only Picard had visited the Asian Art Museum

In the third episode of season one of Star Trek: The Next Generation, titled “Code of Honor,” Captain Picard welcomes the Ligonian leader, Lutan, aboard the Enterprise. In the two screenshots below, we see Picard presenting, as a welcome gift, a clay horse sculpture of ancient China:

Picard identifies the sculpture as a Song-dynasty work of the 14th century (Data corrects him, claiming the 13th century). However, both of them are off the mark. According to my professional eye, this glazed horse should be from the Tang dynasty (618-907)–it is a quintessential Tang horse. Compare it with this one in the collection of the Asian Art Museum:

Notice the similarities in the glazing colors and the robust form of the horse. The horse was a prized animal in China, especially in the Tang dynasty when it represented the power and might of the empire. The Tang empire is considered to be a golden era in China’s history both in culture and in the military. So it makes sense that Picard would gift the noble Tang horse to Lutan, but I blame the writers of this episode for not having done their homework.  They should have visited the Asian Art Museum!

Not so hidden after all

Flying someplace fabulous this summer? If so you might just stumble across the Asian Art Museum on your way out of town.

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.
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China in the 21st Century–discussion on KPFA this morning

Jeffrey Wasserstrom gave a really interesting interview on KPFA this morning about China. (He comes on at 34 minutes into the morning show).

It made me think anew about the rapid changes China has undergone over the past 40 years. When asked for his predictions for the future of China, Jeffrey said he expects China to keep surprising us since all predictions have been off base for a long time. Jeffrey, who is professor of History at UC Irvine, will be at the Asian introducing some films about contemporary China on September 5 at 11am and 2pm, and at 12pm will be signing copies of his books, including his latest Global Shanghai, 1850–2010.

In the galleries: a few additions

Over the coming months, astute visitors may notice some gallery changes that are not part of our regularly scheduled gallery rotations. This is because with Shanghai is up for an extended period, museum staff have an opportunity to rotate some of our less light sensitive objects, including bronzes, ceramics, and stone sculpture. This week we started by installing three new works in the South Asian and Chinese galleries.

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

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Spring rotations

Have you been in the galleries recently? If so, you may have noticed that we are in the midst of rotation season right now. Each week, we remove another group of light sensitive objects from view and replace them with works from storage. Attentive visitors can track these changes by looking for the blue “newly on view” dots in the galleries.

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?

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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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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."