Kyoto Kano School, Scenes from the Tale of Genji, 1625–60, pair of six-panel folding screens, ink, color, gold pigment, gold flecks, and gold foil on paper

After being closed due to Covid, the Yale University Art Gallery is now open again to visitors. The gallery is open Tuesday through Sunday, and from September to June, is open late Thursday nights.

The gallery’s collection of Asian art comprises nearly 8,000 works from East Asia, South Asia, continental Southeast Asia, Iran, Iraq, and Turkey and spans the Neolithic period to the 21st century. Highlights of the collection include Chinese ceramics and paintings, Japanese paintings and prints, and Indian and Persian textiles and miniature paintings.

As communicated by Denise Patry Leidy, Ruth and Bruce Dayton Curator of Asian Art, three new thematic displays of paintings are on view in the Asian art galleries through May 2022. Practice as Power in the Paintings of South Asia highlights works from the gallery collection that illustrate ascetic practices, as well as wrestling and other physical activities, alongside comparable paintings from the Yale Center for British Art. The installation explores the longstanding South Asian tradition of engaging with the body as both a conduit toward and evidence of spiritual transcendence. Painting during the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) examines the multifaceted ways in which painters, whether amateur or professional, reimagined classic stylistic traditions such as those of the Northern Song (960–1127) and Southern Song (1127–1278) dynasties. Addressing ingenious Japanese responses to this continental preoccupation with the past, Nanga: The Japanese Transformation of Continental Literati Art centers on painting and writing as means of self-development and self-expression, a notion shared by all East Asian cultures.