Asian Art Calendar of Events

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

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Europe & Africa | Asia

Freed From the Vault – The Collection of Jacques Marchais
Place: Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art - New York, 338 Lighthouse Avenue Staten Island, New York, USA
Date: Jan 01, 2013 to Jun 30, 2013
Detail: Jacques Marchais was an early 20th century collector of Tibetan and Himalayan Art. These objects included sculpture, thankgas, ritual objects and jewelry. This exhibit includes a representative sample of the scope of her collection and features many objects that have not been seen by the public in more than 20 years.
The Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art holds one of the finest collections of Tibetan art in the United States.
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Birds in the Art of Japan
Place: The Metropolitan Museum of Art at Galleries 225–232 - New York, 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, USA
Date: Feb 02, 2013 to Jul 28, 2013
Detail: This exhibition presents approximately 150 works in various media from medieval times to the present. Highlights include a unique, early seventeenth-century pair of ink-painted screens showing a flock of 120 mynah birds in flight or strutting on the shore; and a set of four enormous paintings of birds of prey by the nineteenth-century master Kawanabe Kyōsai, each over nine feet high. Displays of paintings will be juxtaposed with examples of modern and contemporary textiles, ceramics, lacquerware, and bamboo art. Drawn mostly from the Museum\'s own collection, it will also feature some fifteen works on loan from private collections.
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Masterworks: Jewels of the Collection
Place: Rubin Museum of Art - New York, 150 West 17th Street, New York, USA
Date: Feb 06, 2013 to Jan 13, 2014
Detail: Masterworks: Jewels of the Collection showcases the best of Himalayan art in the Rubin Museum\'s collection in their international context. This new presentation provides access to old favorites and new acquisitions and gifts. Organized geographically, it sets the diverse regional traditions of West Tibet, Central Tibet, East Tibet and Bhutan in relation to the neighboring areas of India, Kashmir, Nepal, China, and Mongolia. Highlights include a Chinese clay image of the guardian king Virupaksha.

Other highlights in the exhibition include a 12th century lotus mandala of Hevajra from Northeastern India, a historically extremely important drawing with the footprints of the founder of a major Tibetan Buddhist School predating 1217, a dated bilingual silk edict from the court of the 5th Dalai Lama, and a contemporaneous portrait of this important Dalai Lama incarnation in gold on red background. Dynamic wrathful deities range from the fifteenth-century snake-bodied personification of the eclipse, Rahula, to the extremely fierce Bhutanese representation of the protective goddess Dusolma.

Life-size facsimiles of an entire sequence of murals from the Lukhang, the Dalai Lamas’ Secret Temple near the Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet, provide an exceptional opportunity for viewing Himalayan art at its most lavish and remain part of the Masterworks exhibition. The original 18th century wall paintings—inaccessible to the public until the late 20th century—uniquely depict the most esoteric of meditation and yoga practices in vivid color and detail. Created with new photographic methods by Thomas Laird and Clint Clemens, this display of large-format, high resolution pigment prints allows for even better access to the paintings than is possible in the temple itself. Their presentation at the Rubin marks the first showing in the world of prints created using this technology, and also provides the first ever opportunity outside Tibet to view life-size Tibetan murals in their relationship to portable art from the region.
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Form is Emptiness: Abstract Paintings by Michael Katz
Place: Rubin Museum of Art - New York, 150 West 17th Street, New York, USA
Date: Feb 08, 2013 to Jul 08, 2013
Detail: The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region is China’s largest province. It came under Chinese rule in 1949. With few exceptions, artists and foreign researchers have been denied meaningful access to the rural areas in Xinjiang. Ross\'s close working relationships with a Uyghur anthropologist and a French historian focusing on Central Asian Islam have guided her more than eight-year exploration in the region. The extensive body of work from which this exhibition draws is rare in that it captures a time and place that is rapidly modernizing and transforming, as Xinjiang is now China’s largest source of untapped natural gas, oil, and minerals.

Ross’s work broadens our understanding of an understudied region at one of the world’s greatest cultural crossroads. At the same time, the conceptual and aesthetic dimensions of Ross’s photographs speak to the visual beauty, visceral ardency, and sacred gravity of these sites. The depth of Ross’s work will be enhanced by a book, Living Shrines of Uyghur China, to be released by Monacelli Press at the time the exhibition opens.
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Cambodian Rattan: The Sculptures of Sopheap Pich
Place: The Metropolitan Museum of Art - New York, 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, USA
Date: Feb 23, 2013 to Jul 07, 2013
Detail: This exhibition presents ten works by the contemporary Cambodian artist Sopheap Pich (born 1971), who lives and works in Phnom Penh. Pich works principally in rattan and bamboo, constructing organic open-weave forms that are solid and ethereal, representational and abstract. Much of his work is inspired by elements of the human anatomy or plant life. His constructions combine his training as a painter with the spatial conceptualization of a sculptor, creating three-dimensional objects that are largely defined by their graphic character. Pich's art consciously embodies his memories of culture and place. The exhibition is installed in three spaces in the Asian galleries, including an integration into historical displays, and is part of the Museum's contribution to the New York–wide.
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Patronage and Power: Selections from the Asia Society Museum Collection
Place: Asia Society and Museum - New York, 725 Park Avenue (at 70th Street), New York, USA
Date: Feb 26, 2013 to Aug 04, 2013
Detail: How do the aesthetic qualities and functions of aesthetic objects relate to authority of those they were commissioned for? This exhibition comprises select pieces from Asia Society’s Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection. The show explores the role of patrons of wealth and rank as dominating figures in the production of artistic creations. Approximately forty examples of sculpture, ceramic, and painting from South, Southeast, and East Asia are included in the exhibition.
This exhibition will include works of religious art, both Buddhist and Hindu. Certain patrons supported religious institutions as a way of legitimizing and bolstering their power, and some also commissioned many of these with the expectation that they would be rewarded in the afterlife or next life for their meritorious deeds. In addition, ceremonial objects that served as a visual structure for the governing patterns of patrons both for this life and beyond will be on view. Decorative functional objects such as plates and vases, and prized collectables like paintings and porcelains, which testify to the legitimacy and supremacy of rulers and aristocrats, round out the exhibition.
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Flip Side: The Unseen in Tibetan Art
Place: Rubin Museum of Art - New York, 150 West 17th Street, New York, USA
Date: Mar 15, 2013 to Aug 12, 2013
Detail: The texts and images on the back of Tibetan art objects reveal clues to their meaning, function, and historical context. For the first time ever both sides of a select group of scroll paintings (thangkas), sculptures, and initiation cards will be explored in detail. Chosen for the beauty, exceptional content, and complexity of their backs, these works of art dating from the 13th to the 19th century illuminate the many uses of the other side in Tibetan culture.
Much of what is found on the reverse relates to the consecration ritual through which the work becomes a religious object. Handprints of eminent masters and drawings strengthen this religious aspect and are explained along with the key Buddhist texts found there as well. The writing also contains clues for identifying the representations on the front and historical details. Such texts range from veneration mantras dedicated to the immediate teachers of the donor to sophisticated poems of praise mentioning historical personages in the memory of which the work of art was made.
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Dunhuang: Buddhist Art at the Gateway of the Silk Road
Place: China Institute - New York, 125 East 65th Street at between Lexington & Park Avenues, New York, USA
Date: Apr 19, 2013 to Jul 21, 2013
Detail: Dunhuang, the western gateway to China, is one of the world’s most esteemed art shrines and cultural heritage sites.
Dunhuang: Buddhist Art at the Gateway of the Silk Road will address art and ritual practices of the Northern dynasties (420-589) and the Tang dynasty (618-907). The exhibition will feature excavated art works, high relief clay figures, wooden sculptures, silk banners, and molded bricks. A group of treasured Buddhist sutras from the famous Cangjingdong (The Hidden Library Cave) will illustrate the story behind
Dunhuang’s historic discovery. A magnificent replica of the 8th century cave that houses the beautiful
Bodhisattva of the Mogao Grottoes and an illustrious central pillar from the 6th century will also be prominently displayed to recall the actual cave setting.
This exhibition is organized by China Institute Gallery and Dunhuang Academy under the direction of Willow Weilan Hai Chang and is curated by Fan Jinshi, Director of Dunhuang Academy.
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