Festival of the Peaches of Longevity (detail), Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), 1300s–1400s, handscroll, ink, color, and gold on silk, 20 1/2 in. x 15 ft. 8 13/16 in. (52.07 x 479.5837 cm). Gift of the Herman R. and Helen Sutherland Foundation Fund, F72-39.

Picturing Paradise: Blue and Green in Chinese Landscape Paintings,
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
January 6-July 29, 2023

Beginning in the 400s C.E., Chinese painters used qinglü, a palette of blues and greens, to depict paradise or fantastical places. These pigments came from minerals and botanic materials, which had medicinal properties. Therefore, the colors connected ideas of health, healing, and longevity to the scenes of paradise. Artists originally used this palette to depict Buddhist and Daoist paradises.

In the 700s C.E., painters expanded this tradition beyond religious connotations. Some used blue and green to portray tranquil retreats where a hermit might escape the chaotic world. Others favored blue and green to illustrate well-known stories or enhance dramatic scenes.

The paintings and objects dating from the 1200s to 1800s in this exhibition, organized by the Nelson-Atkins, exemplify the enduring tradition of blue and green landscape painting. The colorful landscape paintings span many contexts, showing how a visual vocabulary can be created, built upon, and transformed.

Read more, click here

Zhangzhou ware bowl with design of dragons and plants, Ming dynasty, late 16th–early 17th century, porcelain with opaque white and cobalt-blue glazes and iron and cobalt pigments and white slip under clear glaze, Purchase—Rosalind, Sidney, and Stephen Glazer Memorial Fund for Chinese Ceramics, Freer Gallery of Art, F2006.6a–d

Sneak Peek: Overseas Demand for Chinese Zhangzhou Ceramics
National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution
Online program, January 10, 12pm

Zhangzhou ceramics, also known as Swatow ware, are fancifully decorated wares that were made in southern Fujian province from the 1560s to the 1630s. From the outset, they were sought after abroad, especially in Southeast Asia and Japan, but Western interest in Zhangzhou ware pales in comparison to the attention garnered by porcelain from Jingdezhen in Jiangxi province. This talk introduces NMAA’s collection of Zhangzhou bowls, showcasing the potters’ creativity and ingenuity in making greatly appealing wares at a rapid pace to supply a vibrant overseas market. They worked in a range of palettes: red, green, and turquoise; blue and white; and blue, brown, and white with built-up slip. A bowl decorated with dragons that was originally exported from China to Japan and is now in the Freer collection is a special highlight of the talk.

Jan Stuart is the Melvin R. Seiden Curator of Chinese Art at NMAA. Her work focuses on Chinese arts from the tenth century to the present. Currently, she is working on a book about ceramics in the Freer Gallery of Art and an exhibition of a lacquer screen made in 1672. She co-curated and coedited the exhibition and catalogue Empresses of China’s Forbidden City, 1644–1912 in 2018–19. Between 2006 and 2014, she was Keeper of Asia (department head) at the British Museum.

Read more and register, click here.

L-R: Sui-Tang Dynasty White Ware Vase, 6th-7th century, H. 25.6 cm. and Baofeng Junyao Bowl,
Song Dynasty 960-1127, Dia. 19.2 cm., Provenance: ex Hellner Collection, Sweden

The Mary and Cheney Cowles Collection of Chinese Ceramics
Zetterquist Galleries
Asia Week New York March 2023

Eric Zetterquist announced that during Asia Week New York this March 2023, his gallery will exhibit and sell the exceptional collection The Mary and Cheney Cowles Collection of Chinese Ceramics.

This collection has been quietly and judiciously assembled over the last fifty years, purchased from many of the world’s finest dealers and auctions, with an eye for artistic beauty and excellent quality. The fifty-six pieces offered span one thousand years from the 4th through 14th centuries and include concentrations in white and sancai Tang Dynasty earthen wares, as well as Yue, Yaozhou, Ding, Qingbai, Jun, and Cizhou type wares, with black and brown kilns from Northern and Southern China represented.

This gathering of ceramics has been known to only to a handful of visiting scholars over the years and has rarely been seen in its entirety. This March will offer a rare moment to see this extraordinary collection before it disperses.

Read more, click here

The Mary and Cheney Cowles Collection of Classical Chinese Furniture, Ming dynasty huanghuali chair.

Three rare and important Ming dynasty huanghuali chairs are among the star lots of the Mary and Cheney Cowles Collection of Classical Chinese Furniture sale to be offered at Bonhams during Asia Week New York in March 2023. This twenty-lot collection was carefully purchased in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s by the Seattle-based couple known for their recent landmark gift of over 550 Japanese paintings, calligraphy, and ceramics to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, and the Portland Museum of Art.

Mr. Cowles has been collecting Asian Art for over 40 years, since he went to law school in San Francisco, and was encouraged by his aunt, Phoebe McCoy, who was then a docent at the Asian Art Museum. He was inspired to collect Chinese furniture through his trips to the Metropolitan Museum in New York and later the Nelson Atkins Museum in Kansas City, where he viewed their fine holdings of classical Chinse furniture. He founded the Crane Gallery in 1975, specializing in Asian Art, which he owned until his retirement in 2016. Over these decades, he and his wife, Mary have enhanced their private collection with superb Japanese paintings, calligraphy and porcelain alongside their passion for Chinese art. They have been active philanthropists and supporters of museums and educational ventures in Asian Art.

Living in Two Times: Photography by Bahman Jalali and Rana Javadi,
National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution
Concludes January 8

Living in Two Times features the work of Bahman Jalali (1944–2010) and his wife and closest collaborator Rana Javadi (born 1953). Noted for their sharp documentary images and haunting photomontage works, the artists are among the most influential figures in the development of late twentieth-century photography in Iran. Driven by the medium’s powerful—and fragile—relationship to memory, Jalali and Javadi created an unparalleled visual record of a tumultuous period in their homeland.

This exhibition features images by both photographers from the iconic series Days of Blood, Days of Fire, capturing events in Tehran during the 1979 Iranian Revolution, as well as images from Jalali’s Khorramshahr: A City Destroyed and Abadan Fights On, drawn from his years spent on the Iran-Iraq warfront. Throughout his career, Jalali returned continually to his project of observing the changing lives and landscapes of Iran. A third section of the exhibition presents a selection of his images of fishing communities along the northern Persian Gulf. In addition to their documentary projects, Jalali and Javadi preserved early twentieth century archives, which they used as a basis for creating vivid photomontages that explore the role of the medium in documenting history. This will be the first museum retrospective in the United States that offers a glimpse of Jalali’s extensive practice and the first to be presented together with a selection of Javadi’s evocative work from the late 1970s to the present.

Curator-Led Tour—Living in Two Times: Photography by Bahman Jalali and
Rana Javadi
In-person program, January 7, 2-3pm
Meet curator Carol Huh in the galleries for a tour of Living in Two Times: Photography by Bahman Jalali and Rana Javadi. The tour will begin at Arthur M. Sackler gallery at the entrance of the exhibition on level B1.

Read more, click here

Book Launch: Ganesh Haloi: A Rhythm Surfaces in the Mind,
Akar Prakar, New Delhi
January 5, 5:30pm IST

Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, in association with Akar Prakar, invites guests who are in New Delhi to a special book launch. The new publication, Ganesh Haloi: A Rhythm Surfaces in the Mind, is edited by Natasha Ginwala and Jesal Thacker, with contributions by Iftikhar Dadi, Adam Szymczyk, Lawrence Rinder, Soumik Nandy Majumdar, Roobina Karode, Natasha Ginwala, and Jesal Thacker, and published by Akar Prakar and Mapin Publishing. There will also be a Film Screening of A Rhythm Surfaces in the Mind, directed by Nilanjan Paul. After the book launch and screening, a conversation between Adam Szymczyk and Roobina Karode will follow. For those in New Delhi, this engaging event will take place at Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Saket 145, DLF South Court Mall in New Delhi.

Read more, click here

Chen Duxi (born 1983), Magnolia Delavayi, mineral pigment on silk,59 x 39 3/8 in. (150 x 100 cm.)

Chen Duxi: The Order of Body, Fu Qiumeng Fine Art
January 6-March 4, 2023
Opening reception, January 6, 6-8pm

Beginning on January 6th, Fu Qiumeng Fine Art presents Chinese artist Chen Duxi’s (born 1983, Chengdu) first major solo exhibition in North America. Titled The Order of Body, the exhibition consists of paintings on silk which reveal the artist’s persistent interrogation of time, motion, and objects through a synthesis of Western oil painting and traditional Chinese ink painting. The neo-traditionalist paintings Chen creates can best be located in his ongoing engagement with lines and threads, which seek to express the subtle stability of qi and the concealed shi (momentum) that underlie the observable world. Though his works take classical elements of landscape and figures as stylistic references, Chen does not merely seek to revive antiquity. Rather, he grounds the act of painting in the artist’s embodied relationship with the natural world.

Read more, click here

Huang Shaofen (active 1881-1901), Teaching in Haimen (detail), handscroll, ink and color on paper, Matthew J. Edlund Dongguanlou Collection

Mountains and Painting: An Educational Journey Through Landscape Art,
China Institute
Concludes January 6, 2023

Combining photography of the renowned Chinese mountains with original Qing dynasty (1644-1911) Chinese landscape paintings from U.S. private collections, this showcase spotlights twenty-two works of art by thirteen artists, revealing the importance of mountain culture in Chinese history and art. The assembled works highlights the formats, compositions, techniques, subjects, and aesthetics of Chinese painting. This unique display provides basic knowledge of landscape painting, as well as inspire further interest in the genre and arouse and appreciation of the relationship between man and nature in Chinese culture. The Qing-dynasty artists featured in the exhibition are Dai Mingyue戴明说, Wu Tao吴滔, Huang Yi黄易, Zhang Geng张庚, Gu Linshi顾麟士, Hu Gongshou胡公寿, Dai Xi戴熙，Huang Shaofen黄绍芬, Xiang Kun项坤, Chen Chongguang陈崇光, and an unknown painter.

Read more, click here

Man's Informal Robe, Coromandel Coast, mid-18th century, cotton, plain weave foundation, painted and resist-dyed, Grace R. Smith Textile Endowment, 2016.176

Fabricating Fashion, Art Institute of Chicago
Final day January 2, 2023

Fabricating Fashion celebrates the artistry and rich legacy of an extraordinary range of fabrics for clothing from around the world.

Textiles are fundamental to clothing: they determine a garment’s color and texture and contribute to its silhouette. They have the power to convey messages, from social rank and status to gender to cultural identification, as well as individual preference and taste. Handmade fabrics, in particular, often have special resonance for the wearer as the product of human labor and technical expertise.

The decorative fabrics presented in this exhibition, all part of the museum’s permanent collection, were specifically intended for clothing and meant to be worn in a particular way or made into a certain type of garment. Indeed, some of the works on view are fully realized articles of clothing. They were created by a range of communities and by individuals, both professionally trained and self-taught, who come from a spectrum of economic classes and are often unidentified.

While a number of techniques showcased in this presentation—such as dying, embroidery, printing, and weaving—are practiced globally, other materials and methods are more closely associated with particular cultures: Indian cotton, Chinese silk, French embroidery, West African indigo, among them.

Read more, click here