Koike Shoko 小池 頌子 (b. 1943), Covered shell-shaped container with white glaze (detail), 1992, with signed wood box, stoneware, 11 1/8 × 10 1/8 in. (28.2 × 25.6 cm)

Shaping Clay: Women Artists in Contemporary Japanese Ceramics
May 21 – June 4, 2026
18 East 64th Street, Suite 1F, NYC

Dai Ichi Arts, Ltd  is pleased to present Shaping Clay: Women Artists in Contemporary Japanese Ceramics, a new group exhibition featuring contemporary women artists working in the ceramic medium, presenting new works by prominent and established artists alongside new rising voices in the landscape of Japanese ceramic art.

Since the postwar period, women ceramic artists in Japan have played a transformative role in redefining the medium. Long excluded from many areas of ceramic production due to gendered social norms, generations of artists began challenging tradition through sculptural, abstract, and experimental approaches to clay during the postwar period. This vanguard generation of women helped shape the future of contemporary ceramics today. Since then, an exciting flourishing of expression among women ceramic artists has continued to thrive across Japan’s contemporary ceramic landscape.

Building upon the current presentations of Radical Clay—a traveling U.S. exhibition highlighting Japanese women artists working in ceramics from the celebrated Carol and Jeffrey Horvitz Collection of contemporary Japanese ceramics—this presentation extends that conversation. Alongside works by artists featured in Radical Clay, it brings together established, emerging, and innovative voices shaping the future of contemporary Japanese ceramics.

To view these extraordinary works and their digital catalog, click here.

Installation view, Sacred Paper: Korean Ritual Artsnju Seo

Sacred Paper: Korean Ritual Arts
Closing Sunday, May 24, 2026
Stony Brook University, 100 Nicolls Road

There’s still time to view Sacred Paper: Korean Ritual Artsnju Seo at Charles B. Wang Center before it closes May 24!

Korea’s ritual paper arts reveal a remarkably inventive tradition in which humble mulberry paper becomes an expressive material of extraordinary range. This exhibition highlights two regional practices that transform fragile fibers into complex sculptural forms. In Chungcheongnam-do, the Seolwi Seolgyeong tradition creates intricate cut-paper structures that define and organize ceremonial space. The artist Jongseung Park demonstrates how paper can be shaped into protective architectural forms through precise cutting, layering, and assembly. Dr. Heera Shin presents folded flowers, lanterns, and ornaments that animate ritual settings along Korea’s East Sea coast with color and movement. Shown together, these works celebrate paper’s versatility, regional diversity, and enduring craftsmanship.

To learn more, click here.

Lee Kang So, From a River-99215 (1999)

Lee Kang So: A Field of Becoming
May 13 – June 20, 2026
122 E 32nd Street, 2nd Fl, NYC

Korean Cultural Center New York is pleased to present Lee Kang So: A Field of Becoming, now on view through June 20.

Over the past five decades, Lee Kang So (b. 1943) has developed a distinctive and influential practice within Korean contemporary art. Working across painting, sculpture, installation, photography, and performance since the 1970s, he has consistently challenged fixed definitions of artistic form, approaching art as an open and evolving process rather than a finished object.

A Field of Becoming brings together works from the 1970s to the present, tracing the continuity and transformation of Lee’s practice. From his early experimental works—where action, material, and environment intersect—to later paintings and sculptures, Lee’s work unfolds through time, resisting closure and embracing change.

Lee’s artistic trajectory is closely connected to New York. In the mid-1980s, he was active as a visiting professor and artist at the State University of New York, Albany, and in the early 1990s participated in the Studio Artist Program at MoMA PS1. Decades later, this exhibition at the Korean Cultural Center New York marks a renewed encounter—bringing his work into dialogue with the city that played a formative role in its development.

To learn more, click here.

Shigaraki Jar, 15th c., Japan, stoneware with natural ash glaze, 19¾ x 17¾ x 17¾ in. (50.2 x 45 x 45 cm)

Japanese Ceramics and Modern Paintings
May 13 – June 26, 2026
8 East 67th Street, NYC

Thomsen Gallery is delighted to invite you to their new exhibition Japanese Ceramics and Modern Paintings, on view through June 26.

Celebrating one of the most enduring and vital traditions in Japanese art, the exhibition brings together ceramic works spanning from fifteenth-century stoneware vessels to refined contemporary porcelains, tracing over 10,000 years of artistic innovation and aesthetic continuity.

Complementing the ceramics is a selection of Japanese screen and scroll paintings from the first half of the twentieth century, creating a rich dialogue between material, form, and modern expression.

To learn more, click here.

Curious Rock and Old Pine, Ouyang Pu (歐陽溥) and Zhang Yuanheng (張元衡), c. 1920s to 30s, gelatin silver print, Shaanxi

Shanghai: A Century of Photography, 1850-1950
Closing Tuesday, May 19, 2026
10 West 18th Street, 7th Fl, NYC

Don’t miss your last chance to journey through a century of Shanghai’s shifting image and imagination with Shanghai: A Century of Photography, 1850-1950 at The Loewentheil Photography of China Collection, on view through May 19!

This exhibition traces one hundred years of photographic art in Shanghai, from the city’s earliest paper photographs of the 1850s to its vernacular photography of the 1950s. Shanghai was one of the earliest locations for the emergence of photography in China. The city attracted foreign and pioneering Chinese photographers who captured the unique imagery of the cosmopolitan treaty-port era.

This exhibition presents some of the earliest photographic records of Shanghai, produced when the art of photography was developing in China. Early albumen views of the Bund, waterways, gardens, and commercial districts show how photographers responded to a rapidly transforming urban landscape, experimenting with scale, clarity, and vantage point. Shanghai remained the central locus of photographic art, modernist experimentation, and art publishing and distribution in China from the advent of photography into the 1950s. The city was a hub not only for images of Shanghai, but for photographs printed and circulated throughout the China and the world.

The exhibition brings together rare nineteenth-century views, portraits, and landscapes. Its range of twentieth-century vernacular works charts the evolution of photographic vision in Shanghai, combining art, commerce, and modernity. A rare and important group of gelatin silver prints from the 1933 Liangyou National Photography Tour documents an early effort to advance photography as a modern artistic medium in China. Schedule your visit today before it closes!

Photography by Timothy Schenck, courtesy of Friends of the High Line

The Light That Shines Through the Universe: Lectures and Meditations
May – October, 2026
High Line at 30th Street and 10th Avenue, NYC

Join The Rubin from May through October 2026 for a free monthly lecture and guided meditation series, presented in partnership with the High Line. The series is in support of Tuan Andrew Nguyen’s High Line Plinth artwork, The Light That Shines Through the Universe, located on the High Line at 30th Street and 10th Avenue.

Inspired by Nguyen’s sculpture and the cultural context that influenced its creation, each program features a lecture by a scholar, artist, or cultural leader, followed by a guided meditation led by an invited practitioner. The series is hosted by Tashi Chödrön, Rubin’sHimalayan cultural programs and communities ambassador, who has led meditation programs for over 10 years and is the host of the Museum’s Mindfulness Meditation podcast. This blend of intellectual and contemplative practice invites audiences to pause, reflect, and consider the artwork’s historical and philosophical themes through both thought and experience.

To view the full schedule and register, click here.

Top left: Hideo Furukawa; top middle: Matthew Sharpe; top right: Tomoka Shibasaki. Bottom left: Motoyuki Shibata; bottom middle: Roland Kelt; bottom right: MONKEY, Vol.6 HORROR

Hideo Furukawa and Tomoka Shibasaki in Conversation with Matthew Sharpe
Saturday, May 16, 2026
2pm
525 West 26th Street, NYC

Seizan Gallery is excited to host a special event: Hideo Furukawa and Tomoka Shibasaki in conversation with Matthew Sharpe in collaboration with the annual anthology MONKEY. MONKEY’s contributing editor Roland Kelts and MONKEY’s founder Motoyuki Shibata will moderate a wide-ranging conversation among the three acclaimed authors, from a discussion of their latest works to their writing practices. Kendall Heitzman, a principal Furukawa translator, as well as Ted Goossen, MONKEY co founder, will also join the conversation.

MONKEY, the Japanese literary journal, and MONKEY New Writing from Japan feature visual work by artists, illustrators, and photographers, including SEIZAN artists Asako Tabata and Motohide Takami. To celebrate this special event, recent paintings by Asa Hiramatsu, a regular MONKEY contributor, will be on view in the gallery, until July 2, 2026. Volumes 3–6 of MONKEY New Writing from Japan will be available for purchase at the gallery.

To learn more and reserve your seat, click here.

Group of works by Mori Tōgaku

Architect of the Bizen Renaissance: Mori Tōgaku
May 7 — June 26, 2026
39 East 78th St, Ste 401, NYC

This May, Joan B Mirviss LTD is honored to present, in conjunction with Shibuya Kurodatoen Co. Ltd., Architect of the Bizen Renaissance: Mori Tōgaku. While Mori Tōgaku’s (b. 1937) name has become synonymous in Japan with contemporary Bizen ceramics, Architect of the Bizen Renaissance marks the artist’s first solo show and retrospective outside of Japan. Featuring twenty-three works that span the artist’s career, this exhibition presents the remarkable aesthetic diversity that this master ceramist has been able to achieve within the Bizen tradition.

Mori Tōgaku was born on March 23, 1937, in the town of Imbe, historically part of Bizen Province. His family has been making ceramics there since the Muromachi period (1336–1573), when they were officially designated one of the six Bizen ceramic lineages that established the region’s tradition of unglazed, wood-fired ceramics. A true virtuoso in this challenging and often unpredictable ceramic style, Mori Tōgaku has long impressed Japanese art critics with his mastery of highly coveted surface effects, such as scarlet straw marks (hidasuki) and trailing natural ash glaze reminiscent of sesame seeds (nagare goma), both of which can only be achieved through meticulous wood-firing. Mori has spent decades avidly researching historical sherds and kiln sites for clues about historical firing techniques. His efforts to reconstruct the communal Great Kilns used by medieval Bizen ceramists have become a central component of his artistic legacy. Since 1980, Mori has constructed several climbing Great Kilns, including the 53-meter-long Sabukaze Great Kiln and the 85-meter-long New Sabukaze Great Kiln. In this exhibition, we are delighted to present works that were fired in these magnificent kilns.

Mori combines his unrivaled technical prowess with a keenly contemporary and sculptural sense of form. His curvilinear Banded Pattern vessels undulate with dynamic rhythm, while the sharp angles of his geometrically faceted vessels cast intriguing shadows across the surface of his clay. Earlier in his career, he also experimented with techniques not typically employed in Bizen ceramics, such as nerikomi marbleization and oxidized silver or platinum surface decorations, both of which he typically applied to low-fired earthenware. The resulting soft and porous texture of these works is reminiscent of ancient objects unearthed in an archeological dig, imbuing a sense of timelessness to these more experimental designs.

A truly unique ceramic artist, Mori Tōgaku has used his deep knowledge of Bizen ceramic techniques to bring an entirely contemporary expression of Bizen to life. Architect of the Bizen Renaissance offers a wonderful opportunity to explore the artist’s original approach to clay.

To learn more, click here.

Lucy Liu, 1965 (detail), 2026, oil on canvas, 48 x 60 in. (122 x 152.5 cm)

Lucy Liu: Hard Feelings
May 14 – June 6, 2026
Opening Reception: Thursday, May 14, 6-8pm
120 East 65th Street, NYC

Alisan Fine Arts is pleased to present Hard Feelings, a solo exhibition of paintings by Lucy Liu opening May 14. Centered on works from her ongoing what was series, the exhibition explores the emotional and psychological terrain of memory, with particular attention to family, cultural inheritance, and the shifting nature of personal history.

The title, Hard Feelings, resists a singular interpretation, pointing instead to the difficulty of feeling itself—layered, uneven, and at times inaccessible. Liu’s paintings trace this complexity, holding tensions between attachment and distance, forgiveness and compassion, while inviting viewers to reflect on how the past persists in the present.

To learn more, click here.

Installation view, Whispers of the Unseen: In Resonance

Whispers of the Unseen: In Resonance
Closing Saturday, May 9, 2026

There’s still time to experience Whispers of the Unseen: In Resonance before it closes on Saturday, May 9! Featuring three Macau-born artists—Wong Weng Cheong, Rusty Fox, and Heidi Lau—the exhibition brings together distinct practices in printmaking, photography, and ceramic sculpture. Though their approaches differ, each artist shares a quiet, introspective sensibility that whispers rather than declares. Belonging to the same generation and shaped by similar cultural landscapes, their artistic languages diverge, yet the spiritual undercurrents of their works resonate within a shared field.

To learn more, click here.

Live Panel Discussion during Asia Week New York, March 12, 2026

If you missed our live panel talk during Asia Week New York this March, The Art and Craft of Photography: From Asian Traditions to Contemporary Practice, you can watch it now on our site!

Presented in collaboration with Sigma Foundation, this compelling discussion traces the evolution of photography from its historical foundations to today’s most forward-looking practices. A distinguished panel of artists, a curator, and an industry expert reflect on how Japanese and broader Asian traditions continue to shape the language of contemporary image-making within a global context.

The conversation moves fluidly between tradition and experimentation, the influence of photographic technologies on artistic vision, and the curatorial challenges of presenting Japanese photography to international audiences. From postwar photographic narratives to contemporary abstraction, the panel offers rare insight into photography’s ongoing reinvention.

A must-watch for anyone interested in photography, contemporary art, and visual culture!

Panelists include:

Gen Aihara, Artist
Maggie Mustard, Assistant Curator of Photography, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, The New York Public Library
Kazuto Yamaki, CEO, Sigma Corporation, and Founder, Sigma Foundation
Eric Zetterquist, Artist
Moderated by Alice Teng, Executive Director, Asia Week New York

About Sigma Foundation
The Sigma Foundation is a philanthropic initiative dedicated to advancing photography as an art form. The Foundation collaborates with artists worldwide to produce and present their work – regardless of whether they use Sigma products. Through its Photobook Project, the Sigma Foundation commissions and publishes long-form, artist-driven books. The inaugural artists in the series – Sølve Sundsbø, Julia Hetta, Stephen Gill, and Anders Petersen – reflect the Foundation’s commitment to craftsmanship, creative independence, and the enduring power of the printed image. To learn more, click here.

To watch this insightful discussion, click here!