Group of ceramics by Katō Ryōtarō

Colored by Flame: The Artistry of Katō Ryōtarō
Through August 28, 2026
39 East 78th St, Ste 401, NYC

Joan B Mirviss LTD is delighted to present Colored by Flame: The Artistry of Katō Ryōtarō, the artist’s first solo show in the United States now on view. Featuring more than twenty new works showcasing six of Katō’s captivating glazing styles alongside two works of calligraphy, this is a rare and unmissable debut to one of Japan’s most distinctive ceramic voices.

Katō Ryōtarō (b. 1974) is an eight-generation descendant of ceramic artists from the Mino region. His grandfather, Katō Takuo (1917–2005), received the prestigious designation of Living National Treasure for his recreation of historical Persian glazes and lusterware techniques, a tradition that Ryōtarō’s father, Katō Kōbei VII (b. 1945) has continued. In contrast, Ryōtarō has returned to his family’s historical ceramic roots: the sensuous ash-based glazes and wood-fired kiln techniques of Japan’s Mino region.

At the heart of Katō’s ceramic practice is the anagama, or tunnel kiln. After lighting the kiln, he spends five days stoking the flames and praying to the gods of fire. Flames and black smoke spout out from the kiln, the interior of which reaches 1300 degrees Celsius. In these extreme conditions, the glaze turns molten and interacts with minerals present in the clay body. Natural ash coats the works, altering the chemistry of the glaze formula it contacts. It is through this process that the works’ unique gradations of color emerge.

Katō likens this process to a collaboration between himself and the kiln, one that requires an act of surrender on his part:

“My work extends to the point of loading the kiln. The rest is up to the kiln gods.”

Yet this is not entirely the case. While the precise result of the firing is in the kiln gods’ hands, Katō’s years of experience with the anagama, or tunnel kiln, has granted him a remarkable prescience that guides him as he loads the kiln and stokes the flames. Blending generations of Mino craftsmanship with a spirit of experimentation, Kato embraces the kiln’s unpredictability, allowing natural processes to leave their mark on every surface. His work honors tradition while pushing it in unexpected directions. While it is the flames that catalyze the alchemical transformation of the works’ surfaces, it is Katō’s hands that orchestrate it. The result is pure magic: sensuous surfaces that shift from blue to green to ochre, each unique expression a trace of the kiln’s flames.

To learn more and view the digital catalog, click here.

Osumi Yukie　大角幸枝 (Living National Treasure, b. 1945), Flower Vessel “Naruto (Whirlpool)”, 2024, gold and silver, 9 ½ × 12 ¾ × 11 ¼ in. (24 × 32.5 × 28.5 cm)

From the Sea
July 24 – August 21, 2026
Opening Reception: Thursday July 23, 6-8pm
16 East 79th Street, NYC

This summer, Onishi Gallery invites visitors to immerse themselves in the beauty and sensations of the sea. From the Sea brings together works by nine artists who capture the ocean’s many moods and textures—from the rhythm of waves and the touch of sand to the vibrant colors and forms of marine life. Featuring ceramics, metalwork, and a felt piece, this elegant group exhibition transforms the essence of the sea into a captivating celebration of contemporary craftsmanship on the Upper East Side.

Kaneshige Kōsuke (b. 1943, Japanese) reinterprets the ancient Bizen tradition with a sense of humor and imagination; Ōsumi Yukie (b. 1945, Japanese) and Nakagawa Mamoru (b. 1947, Japanese) each in their own way merges the metallic touch with the calming pattern of the ocean waves, reminiscent of the dreamy realms of silver-plated screens from the Momoyama period; Tokuda Yasokichi IV (b. 1961, Japanese) and Shōmura Ken (b. 1949, Japanese) capture the blue serenity of the sea and materialize it into a smooth tactility further enhanced by the elegance of shapes. Konno Tomoko (b. 1967, Japanese) makes ceramics that celebrate the glory of life and its many forms in the deep sea, a veritable sculptural equivalent of the best of Joan Miró’s biomorphic paintings. Inoue Manji’s (1929-2025, Japanese) white porcelain on the other hand commemorates the profound silence of the sea, as the starting point of life where everything came from nothingness.

The Japanese ceramics are accompanied by three metal wall pieces by Jeffrey Maron (b. 1949, American), whose exposure to animism during his time in Japan continues to manifest in the infinite dynamism of his geometric compositions. Liam Lee (b. 1993, American)’s felt piece stands in complete tactile contrast to the other works in the show as he exploits the suppleness of felt as a metaphor for the malleability of life and growth.

The show opens on Friday July 24, with opening reception the evening before. Works by Kaneshige Kōsuke and Konno Tomoko will be participating in Homo Faber this September in Venice, Italy, as Onishi Gallery celebrates its twentieth anniversary this year.

To learn more, click here,

All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins, 2016. Yayoi Kusama. Wood, mirror, plastic, acrylic, and LED. Dallas Museum of Art, TWO x TWO for AIDS and Art Fund, 2018.12.A–I. ©YAYOI KUSAMA. Courtesy Ota Fine Arts, Victoria Miro, and David Zwirner.

From immersive contemporary installations to treasured traditional paintings, the Cincinnati Art Museum celebrates the richness of Japanese art with two exciting exhibitions this summer. Opening July 17, visitors can step into Yayoi Kusama’s mesmerizing immersive installation, All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins—on view at CAM for the first time—while Gifts from Japan presents a remarkable collection of 40 Japanese paintings recently gifted to the museum by Dr. Toshihide Hirose. Together, these exhibitions offer a captivating journey through the innovation, beauty, and lasting influence of Japanese art. Learn more below!

Yayoi Kusama: All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins
July 17 – October 18, 2026

Yayoi Kusama: All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins (2016) features an array of yellow gourds of various sizes, adorned with black polka dots, that are surrounded by mirrors. The result is an immersive installation that allows the visitor to become part of the artwork as they seemingly enter an infinite field of glowing pumpkins.

All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins illustrates Kusama’s characteristic themes, including infinity and obsessive repetition. The artist has described the pumpkin—one of her quintessential symbols—as a form of self-portraiture. A rare assemblage of a dozen Pumpkin acrylic paintings on canvas made between 1990-2004 will also greet gallery visitors, courtesy of the Masterworks Foundation.

Kusama’s career spans more than seven decades, and her Infinity Mirror Rooms are some of her most experimental and iconic works, often incorporating a variety of illuminated objects. Infinity Mirror Room—Phalli’s Field (1965) was Kusama’s first installation to use mirrors to create a sense of endless space, featuring a floor covered in hundreds of red-spotted, white fabric-stuffed tubes. Kusama’s mirrored installations represented an innovative step in the emergence of an increasingly experiential practice. In each work, the visitor’s reflection seems to extend into infinity while they simultaneously have an intimate and individualized room experience.

All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins draws on Kusama’s seminal pumpkin room, Mirror Room (Pumpkin) (1991), which was shown at for the Japanese Pavilion at the 1993 Biennale Arte in Venice.

Yayoi Kusama: All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins is on loan from the Dallas Museum of Art.

To learn more, click here.

Tsuchiya Reisetsu 土屋嶺雪 (Japanese, 1881–1965), Squirrels and Pomegranate (detail), early 20th century, hanging scroll, ink and color on silk, Gift of Dr. Toshihide Hirose, 2025.87

Gifts from Japan
Now – October 8, 2026
Conversations Gallery

Gifts from Japan highlights a gift of 40 Japanese paintings the Cincinnati Art Museum received in early 2025 from Dr. Toshihide Hirose, an orthodontist and art collector in Hirosaki, Japan. Through his interests in art, he became an avid collector of Japanese paintings of the late Meiji (1868–1912) and early Shōwa (1926–1989) eras.

The 40 gifted paintings represent the work of nine artists: Kagawa Hoen (1840–1912), Kondo Suiseki (1870–1950), Maekawa Bunrei (1837–1917), Miura Bunji (1906–1994), Mochizuki Gyokusen (1834–1913), Tanaka Rankoku (1894–1959), Tatewaki Taizan (1886–1970), Tsuchiya Reisetsu (1881–1965), Yamamoto Shuntei (1889–1985). Together, these artists covered a wide range of subjects, including legendary heroes, beautiful women, Kabuki actors, mythical gods, Daoist immortals, landscapes, flower-and-birds, and animals.

Gifts from Japan will display 18 selected works across two rotations:

Rotation 1: June 22–August 24, 2026
Rotation 2: August 24–October 18, 2026

To learn more, click here.

Images courtesy Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art

Celebrate Tibetan Buddhist art and culture with the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art this summer! As part of West Side Fest, a free multisite celebration of arts and culture across Manhattan’s West Side, The Rubin invites visitors to enjoy special programs at two locations on July 11 and 12. The museum is also marking the one-year anniversary of the Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room at the Brooklyn Museum, where this beloved installation continues to offer a unique glimpse into the traditions, artistry, and spiritual practices of a Tibetan Buddhist household shrine. Learn more below!

WEST SIDE FEST 2026

Lecture and Meditation on the High Line
Saturday, July 11, 2:30–3:30pm
The High Line at 30th Street and 10th Avenue

Join a free lecture and guided meditation, presented in partnership with the High Line. The topic of this lecture is Buddhism Along the Silk Road and will be followed by a guided meditation led by Jessica Angima.

To learn more and register in advance, click here.

A Myriad of Mandalas Family Art Workshop
Sunday, July 12, 11:00 AM–3:00pm
The Play Ground, Little Island

Inspired by mandalas in the Rubin’s collection, create your own mandala using a variety of materials and techniques while reflecting on the spectrum of human emotions. This art workshop is designed to be a memorable intergenerational experience for adults and children alike and is suitable for children aged three and older with accompanying adults.

To learn more, click here.

One-Year Anniversary of the Shrine Room in Brooklyn

One year ago, the Rubin Museum Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room found a temporary new home at the Brooklyn Museum. First introduced in 2013, the Shrine Room has long been one of their most beloved offerings, displaying over 100 artworks and ritual objects arranged to represent a Tibetan Buddhist household shrine. The Shrine Room is located on the second floor in the Arts of Asia galleries, where it will remain through 2031.

The contents of a home shrine depend on which Tibetan Buddhist tradition the family follows. The Rubin’s current Shrine Room installation at the Brooklyn Museum follows the Geluk Tibetan Buddhist tradition and includes scroll paintings (thangkas), sculptures, furniture, ritual implements, and musical instruments that are significant in the tradition, offering visitors the opportunity to experience Tibetan religious art in its cultural context.

To learn more, click here.

Looking East from Fifth Avenue: Chinese Porcelain at The Frick Collection
Online

Looking for the perfect escape from the summer heat? Settle in and enjoy this fascinating lecture wherever you are! On March 20, 2026, Yifu Liu, Anne L. Poulet Curatorial Fellow, gave an illuminating lecture tracing the evolution of Chinese porcelain at The Frick Collection—from Henry Clay Frick’s earliest acquisitions to the museum’s most recent additions. Spanning famille noire vases and imperial porcelain from the Yongzheng and Qianlong reigns to Kangxi export dishes produced for European markets, this is a captivating watch for any lover of Chinese art and decorative arts. The recording is now available to view online — we encourage you to watch it here today.

Exhibition poster collaboratively designed by Grace Han, David Wonsik Jung, Heejae Kim, Jeewon Kim, Youngjin Park, and Allison Yoon. Courtesy Tina Kim Gallery

Half Memory, Twice Remembered: Korean Artists from the Yale School of Art
July 9 – 24, 2026
Opening reception: Thursday, July 9, 6-8pm
525 West 21st Street, NYC

Tina Kim Gallery is pleased to present Half Memory, Twice Remembered: Korean Artists from the Yale School of Art, a group exhibition bringing together fourteen current students and recent alumni from the Yale School of Art. Featuring artists working across painting, sculpture, installation, printmaking, and graphic design, the exhibition celebrates a self-organized community connected through shared cultural ties while reflecting the breadth of contemporary practice emerging from one of the leading MFA programs in the United States. Hosted at and co-organized with Tina Kim Gallery, the exhibition also recognizes the gallery’s longstanding commitment to supporting emerging artists from Korea and its diasporas.

The exhibition takes its title from a work by participating artist Su Ji Kim. Half Memory, Twice Remembered evokes the shifting, layered relationship between memory, language, and inheritance that quietly informs many of the practices on view. Moving between personal narrative and collective history, the works engage questions of identity, place, and belonging through both representation and material practice, tracing the ways cultural memory is carried, transformed, and reimagined across generations and geographies.

Participating artists include Claire Chey, Young Grace Cho, Yuna Cho, Grace Han, David Jung, Heejae Kim, Jeewon Kim, Namyoung Kim, Su Ji Kim, Haejin Park, Youngjin Park, Sok Song, Jam Yoo, and Allison Yoon.

They warmly welcome you to the opening reception on Thursday, July 9, from 6-8pm.

To learn more, click here.

Installation view of Robert Oxnam: Searching for Qi at Alisan Fine Arts, NYC

These are the final days of Searching for Qi, an exhibition of Robert Oxnam’s enthralling sculpture and photography at Alisan Fine Arts before it closes July 3. Throughout his work, Oxnam was preoccupied with the relationship between the parts and the whole, searching for each sculpture’s qi, or inner spirit. A quietly captivating body of work not to be missed! Then on July 9, the gallery opens 45th Anniversary: Home and Abroad, celebrating four and a half decades since Alisan Fine Arts was founded in Hong Kong in 1981, with a focus on Chinese diaspora artists from the gallery’s early years alongside a new generation of contemporary voices. Learn more below!

Robert Oxnam: Searching for Qi
Closing Friday, July 3, 2026
120 East 65th St, NYC

A scholar by training and a non-profit leader by profession, Robert Oxnam discovered his artistic practice almost by chance. Walking the beaches of the Long Island Sound, he noticed fragments of weathered wood—washed up on the shore by currents, half-buried under sand and wedged between rocks, carved from sea water, climate, and insects. Oxnam collected these gnarled, irregular shards, cleaning them to reveal a striking parallel. The wooden forms bore an uncanny resemblance to ancient Chinese scholars’ rocks—a millennium-long practice wherein scholar-officials collected unusual rocks for their studios. The custom symbolized an association of small fragments with the expansive, cosmic energy of nature.

The intent, Oxnam noted, was not to replicate the scholar stones tradition, but to seek inspiration in its conceptual metaphor. He continued to explore the close relationship of fragments to the whole, investigating this intimacy in a series of macro photographs. Capturing glacial rocks and boulders on Rocky Point Beach, he became enthralled by the finer details—a circular mark on a rock, a flash of color invisible to the naked eye, an impression filled with sea water after a wave. To Oxnam, these features were simultaneously specific and vast; as if taken from “Google Earth,” they remained minute while suggesting a natural expanse.

Searching for Qi presents these two related bodies of work: Oxnam’s driftwood sculptures, for which he was best known, and his foray into photography.

To learn more, click here.

Walasse Ting, Eight Grasshoppers in the Midst of Flowers, 1990s, 177.5 x 97 cm, Chinese ink & acrylic on rice paper

45th Anniversary: Home and Abroad
July 9 – August 28, 2026
Opening Reception: Thursday, July 9, 6-8pm

Founded in 1981 in Hong Kong, 2026 marks the 45th anniversary of Alisan Fine Arts. To commemorate the occasion, they have organized a series of exhibitions across their various gallery locations and at art fairs under the theme of “Then and Now”.

Here at Alisan Fine Arts New York, their focus will be on the Chinese Diaspora artists with whom they’ve worked since the gallery’s early years, alongside a new generation of contemporary artists.

Organized into three galleries, the exhibition centers on three themes: Reinventing Tradition, featuring the work of Lui Shou-Kwan, Wucius Wong, Yang Jiechang and Yang Yanping; New York, featuring the work of Walasse Ting, Ming Fay, Chinyee; and Home and Abroad, featuring artists Chu Chu, Summer Lee, Justin Lim, Yifan Jiang, Jia Sung, and Kelly Wang.

They look forward to celebrating with you soon!

To learn more, click here.

China Institute Gallery has two exceptional events coming up this July not to be missed. On July 9, join them for the opening ceremony of Chinese Opera: A Century of Dreams — Art, Design, and Technology, a special showcase running July 9–29 that reinterprets classic Chinese stories and theatrical scenes through a rich fusion of Eastern and Western artistic traditions, from ink painting and shadow puppetry to watercolor, oil painting, and beyond. Then on Saturday, July 11, celebrate the closing of their landmark exhibition The Dancing Goddess: Mei Lanfang in America with a festive party featuring the launch of the fully illustrated 400-page exhibition catalogue and a stunning “water sleeves” dance performance. Mark your calendars for these two unmissable events!

Chinese Opera: A Century of Dreams—Art Design, and Technology Special Showcase
July 9 – 29, 2026
Opening Ceremony: Thursday, July 9, 2026, 6-7pm

Inspired by the renowned Peking Opera master Mei Lanfang’s triumphant 1930 American tour and the rich artistic heritage of tradition Chinese Opera, this showcase presents reinterpretations of classic Chinese stories and theatrical scenes through contemporary visual language, drawing on a wide range of Chinese artistic traditions—including ink painting, shadow puppetry, New Year prints, woodblock printmaking, Dunhuang murals, and the vibrant heavy-color paintings of Yunnan’s ethnic minority communities—while incorporating Western artistic media such as copperplate engraving, watercolor, gouache, acrylic, and oil painting. Several projects further explore new creative possibilities through the integration of artificial intelligence and digital technologies. All works were created by students in the Illustration Program at the School of Design, East China Normal University.

Building upon the China Institute’s exhibition The Dancing Goddess: Mei Lanfang in America and echoing Mei Lanfang’s landmark 1930 American tour organized by China Institute of America, this showcase highlights the intersection of art and technology and the dialogue between Eastern and Western artistic traditions. Through the reinterpretation and contemporary reimagining of works inspired by Chinese Opera, it seeks to foster cross-cultural understanding and creative exchange, continuing Mei Lanfang’s legacy of cultural dialogue for new generations.

Join the opening ceremony and enjoy a guided tour led by curator Lan Chen. Free Admission with light refreshments.

To learn more and reserve your free tickets, click here.

Closing Party for The Dancing Goddess: Mei Lanfang in America
Saturday, July 11, 2026, 3-5pm
Exhibition closing Sunday, July 12, 2026

China Institute of America President Jin Yu, CEO George Geh, and Gallery Director Charles A. Riley cordially invite you to the Closing Party of The Dancing Goddess: Mei Lanfang in America on Saturday, July 11, from 3-5pm. Join them as they celebrate the much-anticipated launch of the fully illustrated 400-page exhibition catalogue, alongside a “water sleeves” dance performance. With this festive closing party, they bring the curtain down on this landmark exhibition.

To learn more and reserve your spot, click here.