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Songtsam Hotels Resorts and Tours in Tibet to Sponsor the “Young Scholar Program”

Ancient Tea Horse Road

Songtsam Hotels, Resorts and Tours, based in Tibet, launched a “Young Scholar Program” to support field research projects in remote villages along the Ancient Southwest Silk Road, also known as the Ancient Tea Horse Road in Northwestern Yunnan. The concept of a “Young Scholar Program” was a result of a recent “Tea Horse Road Investigation and Academic Seminar,” which Songtsam co-sponsored together with Discovery Tours.

Songtsam's focus has always been on exploring, presenting, and protecting the authentic local culture and revitalizing the villages.  Their tours, with the hotel properties located along this road,  are a unique travel experience that enables their guests to fully immerse themselves in the cultural traditions of these remote villages along this ancient trading route.

Most Songtsam employees (92%) are from local villages and are trained to be travel guides and hotel service staff, making them the most authentic and direct representatives of the local culture.  Songtsam hopes that through training and sharing the knowledge provided by experts and scholars, the local employees will experience personal growth and be better equipped on how to best convey an understanding of their culture to the guests.  Songtsam will continue inviting local villagers who have lived in the village for generations to share their life story and use it as an important element of the tours. In this way guests will be able to establish a more personal and direct connection with the locals of Tibet and Yunnan.  

About the Ancient Southwest Silk Road 
The Ancient Southwest Silk Road (also known as the Ancient Tea Horse Road) was a trade route mainly through Yunnan, Sichuan, and Tibet. From the 6th century to the 20th century, people in Sichuan and Yunnan provinces traveled by foot and horseback with pack horses to exchange tea for horses with people in Tibet – and thus the pathway was called the Tea Horse Road. The Ancient Tea Horse Road rivaled the Silk Road trade routes for importance. It was the longest ancient trade road in the world, more than 10,000 kilometers (approx. 6,213 miles) in length, and certainly the toughest to travel.

For more information about Songtsam visit www.songtsam.com/en/about

Songtsam sponsors scholar program
Rice field in front of Songtsam Lodge Tacheng, Yunnan, China

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Chambers Fine Art: Artfarm Summer Exhibition: Hong Lei and Taca Sui

Hong Lei, Speak, Memory of Five-Needle Pine, 2005, Color Photograph, 37 1/8 x 47 1/8 in, 洪磊,说吧,记忆五针松,彩色照片,94 x 120 cm

Chambers Fine Art is excited to be participating in Art Trek, a self-guided tour of Upstate Diary's favorite art happenings on May 29th & 30th, 2021, from 11am to 3pm. For this occasion, we are pleased to unveil our summer exhibition at Artfarm for 2021, featuring the work of Hong Lei and Taca Sui.

Hong Lei (born 1960 in Changzhou, China) and Taca Sui (born 1984 in Chingdao, China) share an enormous respect for the great cultural and artistic achievements stretching back thousands of years of China’s past. Born nearly two and a half decades apart from each other, however, they approach this vast subject that can be overwhelming in the the hands of lesser artists from very different perspectives, partly due to temperamental reasons and partly to the different circumstances of their formative years. Hong Lei did not graduate in painting from the Nanjing Art Academy until 1987, three years after Taca was born. Dissatisfied with his Expressionist painting style, he turned to photography in 1996, as did a number of other experimental artists in the mid-1990s. 

Taca Sui studied briefly at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing in 2003 before studying at the Rochester Institute of Technology and the Art Student’s League in New York. His attitude to the past is much more straightforward than that of Hong Lei as the present barely seems to exist for him in the three memorable series of photographs, Odes (2013), Steles (Huang Yi Project), (2013), and Grotto Heavens, (2018). 

Taca Sui, Jiu Long Mountain, 2018, Archival pigment print, Set of 3, 86 1/2 x 55 1/4 in each, Edition of 6 + 2AP, 塔可,九龙山, 收藏级艺术打印,共3件,每件220 x 140.5 cm,6 版 + 2AP


Hong Lei and Taca Sui are both included in the current Asia Society Triennial, divided between Asia Society and the New York Historical Society and Museum & Library. Their work may be seen in Dreaming Together at the New York Historical Society Museum & Library until July 25, 2021.

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Online Symposium at the University of Chicago

Exhibiting East Asian Art in the West
Online Symposium June 4-6

The Center for the Art of East Asia at University of Chicago is pleased to present this free online symposium exploring the exhibition of East Asian art in the West. East Asian art has been exhibited outside its geographic area of origin since the early twentieth century. While exhibitions have since then constituted an important aspect of the production and dissemination of East Asian art historical knowledge, scholars have not studied more vigilantly the manners in which East Asian art was exhibited in relation to the understanding of the field in the West as representing East Asian artistic traditions and as an academic discipline.

Click here for more info and to register…

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Current Exhibitions

Akar Prakar
Sense and Sensation–Ganesh Haloi
Paintings in Ink & Brush
20 March  – 19 June 2021

2:00 pm – 7:00 pm (Mon-Sat)

Akar Prakar, Kolkata
P238, Hindustan Park,
Kolkata 700029

By Appointment

Susan Ollemans Oriental Art

Terracotta, Bronze and Stone
A Private French Collection of Indian and Khmer Statues
22 May – 22 June
By appointment only

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Zoom event at the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery

Yamanaka & Company:  An Asian American Story

Wednesday, May 26, 2021, 12 pm

Join researcher Najiba Choudhury and filmmaker Mika Yatsuhashi as they discuss the legacy of Yamanaka & Company, a Japanese art dealership whose owners endured discrimination and forced sales of their property during World War II. Yamanaka & Company was one of the most well-known art dealers selling Asian art to Western buyers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  A family business initially based in Osaka, Japan, it became a global leader in selling Asian art. Asian objects from East, South, and Southeast Asia sold by Yamanaka are now in leading museums around the world.  

This conversation features a screening of Yatsuhashi’s short film An Uninterrupted View of the Sea, which includes material from the Freer and Sackler and from the director’s own family archives. The film also streams here from May 26–31. 

Register here: https://smithsonian.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0td-qprjMuG9M9j0OEkdlr3vYRZDzF3djb

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Zoom Panel Discussion at Joan B Mirviss LTD

Zoom Panel Discussion at Joan B Mirviss LTD

A View From Above: Understanding Utagawa Hiroshige’s 100 Views of Edo
June 3, 2021 at 5pm EDT

Panelists:

Teresa A. Carbone, Program Director for American Art, Henry Luce Foundation

Joan Cummins, Lisa and Bernard Selz Senior Curator of Asian Art, Brooklyn Museum

Joseph Goddu, Private dealer in American art

Gary Levine, Art dealer specializing in Japanese woodblock prints

Andreas Marks, Mary Griggs Burke Curator of Japanese and Korean Art, Minneapolis Institute of Art

Moderated by Joan Mirviss

Considered one of the greatest achievements in Japanese print making, the celebrated series 100 Views of Edo (Meisho Edo Hyakkei) by Utagawa Hiroshige (1796-1857) is under the spotlight in our next Zoom event. Our panel of experts will offer insights and analyses on this innovative series with far-reaching impact. These remarkably varied and dynamic scenes of 19th-century Edo influenced artists across the globe and through the centuries.

Click here to register for the event.

A confirmation email with the invitation link will be automatically sent to you once you register. 

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Currently on view at Dai Ichi Arts, Ltd.

Ion Fukazawa, b. 1990, Returning to the  Earth 1, 2021, Stoneware
H11″ x L11.8″ x W11.8″ (H28cm x L30cm x W30cm)

Dai Ichi Arts, Ltd. is delighted to introduce rising star and Tajimi-based artist Ion Fukazawa's series: “Returning to the Earth” to our gallery space this May. Ion's works interrogate the difference between artificial and natural forms. In an era when human activity spans almost all the surfaces of the Earth, what is the formal difference between nature and artifice? What is our role in defining our current Anthropocene? Ion is interested in Kogei (Japanese traditional craft) and was taught by Harumi Nakashima. 

Materiality, form, and function are the cornerstones of Ion's works, which articulate the movement of the clay from the centrifugal force created from the rotating wheel. As we return to the clay medium this month, we are proud to present the first of a series of 4 pieces. For more details, click here.

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Zoom-in For Asia Week New York’s Webinar “The Art of Installation and Display”
Thursday, May 27, 2021 at 5pm EDT

Installation shot of ‘Treasures from Asian Armories’, Asia Week New York 2019, by Runjeet Singh.

New York: When installing a precious work of art–whether it’s in a gallery, a collector’s residence, museum or auction house– a variety of elements must be considered for each environment. In The Art of Installation and Display, a panel of prominent experts will provide their perspectives on how they approach the process. To reserve a spot, for Thursday, May 27 at 5:00 p.m. (EST) click here

Says Lark Mason, founder of iGavel Auctions and president of the Appraisers Association of America, who will moderate the discussion: “The art of installation is more than just setting an object on a shelf. It takes expertise to understand the environmental conditions and the impact on the object– whether from direct sunlight, heat, and cold transitions–or the daily opening and shutting of doors with the subtle vibrations and the not-so-subtle vibrations of an earthquake. Objects are meant to be enjoyed and the considerations of a private owner are not the same as an institution.”

The expert panel includes:

Anu Ghosh-Mazumdar has been with Sotheby’s since 2003 and was appointed Head of the Sotheby’s Indian & Southeast Asian Art department in 2011. A specialist for both Classical as well as Modern Indian art, she plays a key role in securing major consignments for Sotheby’s sales of Indian, Himalayan & Southeast Asian Art and Modern and Contemporary South Asian Art held in Asia, Europe and the United States. Landmark sales of Indian and Himalayan art for which she recently provided her expertise include Indian paintings from the Estate of Dr. Claus Virch (2015 & 2016), The Richard R. and Magdalena Ernst Collection of Himalayan Art (2018), and most recently an historic collection of Mughal and Ottoman textiles from the Estate of H. Peter Stern, co-founder of the Storm King Art Center (2020). Ms. Ghosh-Mazumdar has lectured widely on the South Asian art market at both private and public international forums.

Sandra Nunnerley, founder and creative director of her namesake multidisciplinary studio in New York City, is best known for exploring the intersection of art and design. A native of New Zealand, Nunnerley brings a different sensibility to interiors. With the passion of a curator, she is known for creating beautifully edited environments that are timeless and sophisticated.

Designing for clients across the globe, the studio has created a range of projects from metropolitan residences in New York, Hong Kong and Berlin to sophisticated retreats in Aspen, Telluride and the Hamptons – each one reflecting the studio’s signature elevated style. Along with being named to the prestigious AD 100 list by Architectural Digest in the U.S. and Architectural Digest France, the studio has been featured in publications such as Departures, Elle Décor and The Financial Times.

In addition to residential projects, Sandra has also designed several exclusive product collections, including rugs with The Rug Company, tile with Exquisite Surfaces and a limited-edition furniture series with New York gallery Maison Gerard. Her debut monograph, Interiors (published by powerhouse Books), received international acclaim and a second one is in the works.

Runjeet Singh is a dealer of Asian antique arms and armor based in Royal Leamington Spa, a town with stunning Regency architecture based in rural Warwickshire. Having been involved as a specialist in the field of arms and armor since 1999, his considerable experience has led him to exhibit both in the UK and internationally at a broad range of premier antique fairs and events such as Asia Week New York and TEFAF.

Singh’s enthusiasm for his specialist area is particularly academic: all objects are thoroughly researched, and the high-quality catalogues produced for each exhibition sit on the shelves of many prestigious institutions. Owing to his keen eye for fine and rare objects, as well as his careful selection of responsibly sourced pieces with a reliable provenance, he enjoys a reputation as a dealer of discerning taste, which has led to close relationships with the most important collectors, museum curators and academics around the world.

He has advised and contributed to a range of highly regarded publications, and takes great pleasure in providing confidential advice, consultation, and valuations for collectors, institutions, and museums.

William Stender is the founder of 10-31, Inc., a diversified company specializing in the mounting and display of objects of art and history. From initial design concept to the fabrication of every custom armature and base, our experienced staff is devoted to making your objects look their best. 10-31, Inc. has been in the business of fabricating mounts and bases for over twenty years, working with institutions worldwide and handling objects large and small, priceless to precious.

About Asia Week New York
The collaboration of top-tier international Asian art galleries, the six major auction houses-Bonhams, Christie’s, Doyle, Heritage Auctions, iGavel, and Sotheby’s–and numerous museums and Asian cultural institutions, Asia Week New York is a week-long celebration filled with simultaneous gallery open houses, Asian art auctions as well as numerous museum exhibitions, lectures, and special events. Participants from the United States and countries abroad unveil an extraordinary selection of museum-quality treasures from China, India, the Himalayas, Southeast Asia, Tibet, Nepal, Japan, and Korea.

Asia Week New York Association, Inc. is a 501(c)(6) non-profit trade membership organization registered with the state of New York. For more information visit www.AsiaWeekNewYork.com @asiaweekny #asiaweekny

About Songtsam, Presenting Sponsor
Continuing as Presenting Sponsor for Asia Week New York is Songtsam Hotels, Resorts & Tours, an award-winning luxury boutique hotel group with twelve properties (four Linka resort hotels and eight lodges) located in the Chinese provinces of Tibet and Yunnan. Founded by Baima Duoji, in 2000, the hotel group is the only collection of luxury Tibetan-style retreats found across the Tibetan Plateau that strives to preserve and share the cultures and spirituality of its locale, all the while offering guests sophisticated elegance, refined design, modern amenities, and unobtrusive service in places of natural beauty and cultural interest. For information, visit: www.songtsam.com/en

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Kapoor Galleries in the Madison Avenue Gallery Walk 

Group of Three Arhats, Tibet, 18th century, courtesy of Kapoor Galleries

Kapoor Galleries at 34 East 67th Street is part of the Madison Avenue Gallery Walk on Saturday, May 15.  They are pleased to present three fine thangka paintings from their 2021 catalogue, Incarnations of Devotion.  These three thangkas belong to a painting set depicting either sixteen or eighteen figures including Arhat Bakula, Arhat Kanakavatsa and Arhat Nagasena from this catalogue, as well as two others in private collections (see Himalayan Art Resources items no. 21658 and 24114). The set is distinguished by the golden bodies of each elder, the elaborate and distinct golden patterns of each vibrant textile, the rainbow of colors among clouds filling the bright blue skies, the pure white moon and orange sun, and the red cartouches with small gold inscriptions of homage.

To register: https://madisonavenuebid.org/gallerywalk/

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Thomsen Gallery in the Madison Avenue Gallery Walk

Lacquer Works by Yoshio Okada and Screens by Kyoko Ibe at Thomsen Gallery, 9 East 63rd Street 

Yoshio Okada is recognized worldwide for his brilliance in harnessing the traditional Japanese craft of lacquer to contemporary modes of visual expression. “Lacquer Works by Yoshio Okada” is centered around two of his most innovative series: “Celestial Phenomena” and “Jellyfish,” each of them comprising boxes rarely more than five inches in length.

Working with recycled antique handmade ganpi paper, ink and minerals, Kyoko Ibe creates large-scale dynamic designs that, in her words “offer our ancestors a new lease of life in the present.” Fashioned out of pulped and dyed paper that incorporates fragments from centuries-old notebooks, her folding screens such as Morning Glory, measuring 24 feet in width, convey multiple layers of meaning. They suggest the night sky or stormy seas, but each of them also pays tribute to the artist's belief that handmade paper from before the industrial age is far superior to its contemporary counterpart, grows ever more beautiful with the passage of the years, and exemplifies the simple virtues of earlier times.

To register: https://madisonavenuebid.org/gallerywalk/

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