After it was postponed from its original date in January, The Winter Show 2022 opened today, April 1st, at 660 Madison Avenue in the old Barney’s Building. Three AWNY members are participating this year—Ralph M. Chait Galleries Inc., Joan B Mirviss LTD, and Thomsen Gallery. On view through April 10th, Chait Galleries is exhibiting Chinese Export Porcelain and Decorative Arts, Joan B Mirviss is showing KAZARI: Beyond Decoration, and Thomsen Gallery is displaying Japanese Paintings and Works of Art, Including Antique and Modern Folding Screens, Scroll Paintings, Bamboo Baskets, Ceramics, and Gold Lacquer Boxes.

The Winter Show is the leading art, antiques, and design fair in America, featuring many of the world's top experts in the fine and decorative arts. The Fair was established in the mid-1950s as a benefit for East Side House Settlement and, by the end of that decade, had firmly established itself as the leading event of its kind in the United States. This year is The Winter Show’s 68th anniversary season.

National Cherry Blossom Festival, National Museum of Asian Art

Explore Art and Music Online: Treasures from Our Japanese Art Collections
Discover Japanese art from our collections and enjoy talks and performances. Our experts love these exceptional objects, and we think you will fall in love with them too.
Select a video to watch, click here

Online Interactive Docent Tours: Special Cherry Blossom Sessions
The revered sakura, or cherry blossom, has been celebrated in landscapes, figure paintings, and prints by artists from medieval Japan to Katsushika Hokusai and beyond. You are invited to embrace hanami, the traditional Japanese custom of “flower viewing,” by going cherry blossom viewing in the museum’s Japanese art collections!  All online tours must be scheduled at least four weeks in advance. Cherry Blossom programs are available from March 14-April 29 and reservations must be made by April 1st.
For more information and to register, click here

Art & Me Virtual Preservation Family Workshop: Cherry Blossoms in Bloom
Celebrate spring and DC’s beloved cherry blossoms with a festive virtual family workshop. This hands-on preservation workshop is designed for children ages three to eight and their caretakers.
For more information and to register, click here

Tiger, Meiji period, circa 1900, bronze and glass

Drop-In Art Making: Tiger Prints, Peabody Essex Museum
Saturday and Sunday, April 2 and 3, 1-3pm each day

Tigers are beautiful animals that have special striped markings to help them blend in with their natural habitat. They are the largest of the big cats and dwell in a wide native range across the Asian continent. From India to Russia, six different species of tiger can be found. This year is the Year of the Tiger in the Chinese zodiac calendar. It is a great time to celebrate these remarkable animals. In this in-person program, check out the bronze tiger sculpture in The Pod at PEM, then follow along in this drop-in art session and create your own one-of-a-kind tiger print!

Read more, click here

Kimura Yoshiro (born 1946), Vessel with Blue Glaze, 2013

Kōgei: Art Craft Japan
Concludes Monday, April 4
Craftsmanship is a major hallmark of Japanese design. This installation celebrates Japanese kōgei—one-of-a-kind, handcrafted objects made with traditional techniques and natural materials. The works on display highlight the specialized skills of contemporary kōgei artists working in clay, glass, and fabric.

Tanya Goel (born 1985), notation in x, y, z (detail), 2015, © Tanya Goel

Fault Lines: Contemporary Abstraction by Artists from South Asia
Concludes April 10
The power of a line: for the four female artists featured in this exhibition, it’s both an infinitely malleable form and a poetic metaphor for the borders and divisions that make up our world. Discover abstract paintings, sculptures, and works on paper that uniquely embrace and rethink the minimalist approach to explore questions about memory, home, and belonging.
Artists in the Exhibition:
Tanya Goel (born 1985, New Delhi; active New Delhi)
Sheela Gowda (born 1957, Bhadravati; active Bangalore)
Prabhavathi Meppayil (born 1965, Najibabad; active Bangalore)
Zarina (1937–2020, born Aligarh; active New York)
In memoriam of Zarina

Maqbool Fida Husain (1913-2011), Untitled (Horse and Rider), 1994, Christie's

In the past two days, Christie's and Sotheby's concluded their final online sales in this season's Asia Week New York with the following results.

Sotheby's, China/5000 Years, March 18-29, sales total $1,740,438
Christie's, Rivers and Mountains Far from the World: Important Chinese Snuff Bottles from the Rachelle R. Holden Collection Online, March 15-29, sales total $452,214
Christie's, South Asian Modern and Contemporary Art Online, March 15-30,
sales total $1,329,174

The most expensive lot in these three sales was the above painting by Maqbool Fida Husain, sold at Christie's South Asian Modern and Contemporary Art Online for $94,500

Chinese Archaic Bronze Food Vessel, Ding, Early Western Zhou Dynasty, Estimate $80,000/120,000, iGavel's Asian, Ancient, and Ethnographic Works of Art, April 7-26, 2022

Last but by no means least, the last sale of Asia Week March 2022 will be iGavel's Asian, Ancient, and Ethnographic Works of Art, which will take place online on April 7-26. For more information, click here

Sword Guard (Tsuba), late 18th–early 19th century, inscribed by Ishiguro Masatsune, copper-gold alloy (shakudō), copper-silver alloy (shibuichi), gold, copper

Samurai Splendor: Sword Fittings from Edo Japan
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Recently opened–Spring 2024

After almost a century and a half of near-constant civil war and political upheaval, Japan unified under a new ruling family, the Tokugawa, in the early 1600s. Their reign lasted for more than 250 years, in an era referred to as the Edo period, after the town of Edo (present-day Tokyo) that became the new capital of Japan. The Tokugawa regime brought economic growth, prolonged peace, and widespread enjoyment of the arts and culture. The administration also imposed strict class separation and rigid regulations for all. As a result, the ruling class—with the shogun as governing military official, the daimyo as local feudal lords, and the samurai as their retainers—had only a few ways to display personal taste in public. Fittings and accessories for their swords, which were an indispensable symbol of power and authority, became a critical means of self-expression and a focal point of artistic creation.

This installation in the Arms and Armor galleries explores the luxurious aspects of Edo-period sword fashion, a fascinating form of arms and armor rarely featured in exhibitions outside Japan. It presents a selection of exquisite sword mountings, fittings, and related objects, including maker’s sketchbooks—all drawn from The Met collection and many rarely or never exhibited before.

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.

Built on a hillside, Lhasa Linka offers spectacular views of the nearby Potala Palace.

Lhasa means “Blessed Land” in the Tibetan language, and with its vast terrain, abundant water, and fertile valley soil on both sides of the Quji River, it is well suited for farming. When you open your eyes in the morning at Songtsam Lhasa Linka Hotel, you will be greeted by the awe inspiring view of the sacred Potala Palace. Also nearby, located in the old city, is the 1,300-year-old Jokhang Temple, revered by Tibetans and named as a UNESCO world heritage site. The four-storey “House of Buddha” temple is the most popular pilgrimage destination in Tibet.

From the hotel’s slaked lime coloured walls to the indigo carved windows and fish-fin shaped facade, all of these architectural details pay great respect to traditional artisans, Tibetan culture, and ancient wisdom. The interior design of the hotel is inspired and derived from the lifestyle of Lhasa natives; stylistically decorated with exquisite Thangka paintings and wall tapestries to recreate an environment typical of noble families from centuries ago. All 45 rooms exhibit a unique combination of modern and traditional Tibetan aesthetics that are elegantly decorated with wooden floors, Tibetan carpets, and handcrafted copperware.

Read more, click here

Storage room filled with crates at Wiesbaden Collecting Point, 1946, James J. Rorimer papers,
1921–1982, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

Art and the Third Reich: A Provenance Discussion
National Museum of Asian Art
Webinar, Thursday, March 31, 9:30–11:30am EDT

During the tumultuous years of World War II, the Nazi regime and its collaborators orchestrated on an unprecedented scale a system of confiscation, coercive transfer, looting, and destruction of cultural objects in Europe. Countless art objects were forcibly taken from their owners. This webinar explores a little studied subject in the field of art history—art market studies—and World War II history, asking how the Nazi occupation impacted the market for Asian art. In so doing, it also explores the unique complexities of researching and documenting Asian objects that circulated during the period.

Bringing together a panel of provenance experts for a moderated conversation, this webinar highlights the experiences of dealers and collectors of Asian art who lived through or fled the Nazi regime. Panelists will speak to the different experiences of dealers and collectors across occupied Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States, offering insight into how the Third Reich influenced regional art markets and the international trade of Asian art. The conversation will also consider how the atrocities committed by the Nazi party influenced the formation of postwar museum collections and the academic study of Asian art in the West.

This program is part of the series Hidden Networks: Trade in Asian Art, which is co-organized by the National Museum of Asian Art and the Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.

Read more and register, click here