Kimura Yoshirō (Japanese, born 1946). Droplet (Vessel with Blue Glaze), 2017. Half-porcelain with glaze, 21 1/4 × 23 inches (54.0 x 58.4 cm). The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO. Purchase: the Asian Art Acquisition Fund in memory of Laurence Sickman, 2025.28.

Water Embodied: Flow and Meaning of Water in Japanese Art
May 30 – August 23, 2026

Water—an essential element of life on Earth—has long played a vital role in shaping human civilization. In Japan, a country made up of islands, water is more than a natural resource. It is a constant presence that surrounds, connects, and sustains life, while shaping Japan’s culture, beliefs, and artistic creations.

Explore how water has been represented, revered, and reimagined in Japanese art across the past 500 years in Water Embodied: Flow and Meaning of Water in Japanese Art, a new exhibition at the The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Through nearly 50 objects, it highlights water’s presence in daily life, its appearance in legends and deities, and its layered symbolic meanings. The exhibition also explores water’s dual nature—as both boundary and bridge—and how it facilitated the movement of people, goods, and ideas.

Please note that some objects in this exhibition will rotate due to their sensitivity to light.

To learn more, click here.

Kim Koo: Dreaming of Peace Through the Power of Culture
May 28 – August 31, 2026
Opening and Presentation: Thursday, May 28 at 6pm (By invitation only)

The Korea Society is honored to host a special exhibition honoring the life, enduring vision, and profound legacy of Kim Koo—one of the most revered leaders of the Korean independence movement. As a central figure in the Korean independence movement and the President of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea, Kim Koo presented a visionary outlook that emphasized national strength based on culture rather than military or economic power. To commemorate UNESCO’s designation of 2026 as the 150th anniversary of Kim Koo’s birth, The Korea Society offers a unique opportunity to reflect on his legacy through a visual exhibition.

This exhibition is produced in partnership between The Korea Society and The Association of Commemorative Service for Patriot Kim Koo and made possible by the support of the Kim Koo Foundation.

To learn more, click here.

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!