Installation view, Monstrous Beauty: A Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie

Monstrous Beauty: A Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie
Closing Sunday, August 17, 2025
Galleries 963–965

These are the last days to view Monstrous Beauty: A Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie, an exhibition that radically reimagines the story of European porcelain through a feminist lens. When porcelain arrived in early modern Europe from China, it led to the rise of chinoiserie, a decorative style that encompassed Europe’s fantasies of the East and fixations on the exotic, along with new ideas about women, sexuality, and race. This exhibition explores how this fragile material shaped both European women’s identities and racial and cultural stereotypes around Asian women. Shattering the illusion of chinoiserie as a neutral, harmless fantasy, Monstrous Beauty adopts a critical glance at the historical style and its afterlives, recasting negative terms through a lens of female empowerment.

Bringing together nearly 200 historical and contemporary works spanning from 16th-century Europe to contemporary installations by Asian and Asian American women artists, Monstrous Beauty illuminates chinoiserie through a conceptual framework that brings the past into active dialog with the present. In demand during the 1700s as the embodiment of Europe’s fantasy of the East, porcelain accumulated strong associations with female taste over its complex history. Fragile, delicate, and sharp when broken, it became a resonant metaphor for women, who became the protagonists of new narratives around cultural exchange, consumption, and desire.

Don’t miss this captivating presentation before it closes!

To learn more, click here.

Installation view, Body Transformed: Contemporary South Asian Photographs and Prints

Body Transformed: Contemporary South Asian Photographs and Prints
Closing Sunday, August 17, 2025
Arthur M. Sackler Gallery | Gallery 28

Body Transformed: Contemporary South Asian Photographs and Prints presents a selection of works that center on the human figure. For the artists in this exhibition, the human form and the expressive power of photography and print media offer ways to examine the place of the individual in contemporary society.

Works by Pushpamala N. and Clare Arni, Vivek Vilasini, Ram Rahman, and Naveen Kishore focus on the performing body to confront notions of gender and cultural identity through photography, a medium that has played a complicated role in India since the nineteenth century. Jitish Kallat and Rashid Rana manipulate photographic images to simultaneously assert and dissolve the portrait in jarring compositions that hover between reflections on the public being and the disquiet of the inner self.

Master print artists Krishna Reddy, Chitra Ganesh, and Jyoti Bhatt experiment with provocatively carved lines and vivid colors unique to printmaking. Fragmenting, morphing, and multiplying the figure, these artists incorporate various processes to explore representations of power, place, and sexuality in today’s world.

Drawn from the generous gifts of Drs. Umesh and Sunanda Gaur, Body Transformed reveals the human form as a site of both artistic experimentation and cultural inquiry.

To learn more, click here.

Installation view, Delighting Krishna: Paintings of the Child-God

Delighting Krishna: Paintings of the Child-God
Closing Sunday, August 24, 2025
Curator Tour: Wednesday, August 13, 12-1pm
Arthur M. Sackler Gallery | Gallery 24

Imagine a god who appears to you as a mischievous child—you dance together in meadows, play with him, and gift him fruits and flowers. This may give you an idea of how the Hindu Pushtimarg community engages with the divine. They seek to delight and care for the child-god Krishna, and in return, they receive joy and spiritual insight. Delighting Krishna delves into the emotions and philosophy of the Pushtimarg tradition and the ingenuity of its artists. Pushtimarg religious spaces feature monumental paintings of Krishna on cotton cloth known as pichwais. For the first time since the 1970s, these fourteen pichwais from the National Museum of Asian Art’s collections are on view for the public. These paintings are literally larger than life, averaging about eight by eight feet in size. Pichwais are made to serve as backdrops for three-dimensional displays, typically paired with icons of Krishna, music, and scents. This collection of pichwais dates from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, and most were painted in Nathdwara, Rajasthan, the global epicenter of the Pushtimarg community. Encounter these intriguing paintings from multiple angles through insights from Hindu community members, curators, conservators, and a conservation scientist. Alongside the pichwais, court paintings illuminate Krishna’s playful charm, and mixed-media works show how the Pushtimarg tradition engages the senses. Awash with color and brimming with joy, these artworks themselves invite delight.

Be sure to get exclusive insights into how they displayed the monumental paintings in this exhibition on August 13! Three of their experts will lead this tour: curator Debra Diamond, exhibition specialist Patrick Burke, and lighting designer Amber Meade. Learn how their creative collaboration preserved the paintings’ integrity to evoke their original multisensory contexts. Don’t miss this last curator tour before the exhibition closes!

To learn more, click here.

Installation view, Bian Kai: Conjuring Realities

Bian Kai: Conjuring Realities
Closing Sunday, August 17, 2025
Red No. 1-B1, Caochangdi, Chaoyang District, Beijing

There’s still time to experience Bian Kai: Conjuring Realities, the first solo exhibition of Liaoning-born visual artist Bian Kai (b. 1981), at INKstudio in Beijing. This captivating showcase runs through Sunday, August 17. In his contemporary painting practice, Bian Kai draws extensively upon China’s rich mythological, philosophical and religious narrative traditions referencing classical texts—such as the Warring States Era Classic of Mountains and Seas, the Six Dynasties Peach Blossom Spring and the Tang Dynasty Buddhist Canon A Biography of The Tripiṭaka Master of the Great Ci’en Monastery—to render modern parables for our contemporary times. Using the various historical, heavy-polychrome, visual-narrative languages employed in Buddhist and Taoist temple murals, Tibetan Buddhist thangkas and Chinese imperial court painting, Bian Kai visually reconstitutes the mythological, religious content of his source material but never in a direct retelling or portrayal of the canonical story or image. Rather, in what he describes as painting as “performance” yan 演 or art(ifice), he transforms the canonical telling to conjure a “truth” zhen 真 for his audience that is both transcendent and personal.

The exhibition features the artist’s representative masterworks from the last ten years including (on the first floor) Next Stop: Peach Blossom Spring 下一站桃花源 (2024) from his “City” series; the monumental screen The Unbound Journey 逍遥 (2022) from his “Wandering Far and Wide” series; and its companion work Cosmography of the Primordial 山 · 海 (2020) from his “Mountains and Seas” series; and (on the third floor) The Shore of Enlightenment 慧岸 (2018) from his “Religions” series; and the left-incomplete, six-panel work Peach Blossom Spring: Arcadia as Unfinishable 未完成的桃花源 (2016) from his “Peach Blossom Spring” series.

The exhibition also serves as an open research workshop, featuring collaborations with scholars from Stanford University, NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts, and the National Art Museum of China, delving into the layers of historical, philosophical, and mythological content in Bian Kai’s work.

Be sure to catch this enthralling presentation before it closes!

To learn more, click here.

Installation view with flower arrangements by Eriko Nagata Floral Studio, Notes on Blue: The Art of Blue in Japanese Ceramics

Notes on Blue: The Art of Blue in Japanese Ceramics
Closing Friday, August 15, 2025
Closing weekend hours: Saturday, August 9, 11am-5pm; closed on Sunday
18 East 64th St, Ste 1F, NYC

There’s still time to catch Notes on Blue, Dai Ichi Arts’ summer exhibition celebrating the serene and multifaceted beauty of blue in Japanese ceramics—on view through August 15!

In Japanese art history, the color blue (ao) has an enduring legacy in both cultural significance and visual expression. As an island nation, nearly every region of Japan is bordered by the sea, making blue a deep source of inspiration in the physical landscape and the collective imagination. In the world of ceramics, the color blue offers a vast oasis of potential in visual expression, achieved through innovative and technically demanding glazes: most notably celadon and sometsuke (blue-and-white ware). Beyond these glazes, blue also emerges through other techniques such as neriage (marbelized clay), or in sculptural forms where color becomes structural rather than surface.

This stunning exhibition explores the diverse ways in which contemporary and modern ceramic artists engage with the color blue in visually compelling and innovative ways, celebrating its beauty, material complexity, and legacy in Japanese contemporary art and art history.

The gallery is also excited to launch their new E-Shop on Monday, August 11! They hope to bring more beautiful experiences for collectors, connoisseurs, and curators of Japanese ceramics. Stay tuned for more exciting news!

To view exhibition works, click here.

Agra Carpet, India, c. first half 19th century, an early and refined Agra carpet with an overall Mughal floral lattice that is both playfully drawn and precisely rendered, 9 ft. 1 in. x 11 ft. 10 in., Lot 20, estimate: US$4,000-6,000; Antique Rugs and Textiles Online Sale

Online Auction: Antique Rugs and Textiles
Ending August 14, 2025 at 1pm

Bonhams Skinner is pleased to present another exceptional online auction of Fine Carpets & Rare Textiles, running from August 4–14.

This carefully curated sale features an expansive selection of antique room-size carpets and collectible rugs from across the Middle East, India, China, Europe, and the Caucasus—offering unique pieces for both seasoned collectors and design enthusiasts.

Bidding is now open and will close on August 14 at 1pm (EDT). Don’t miss the opportunity to acquire rare and timeless textiles from around the world!

To learn more and place your bids, click here.

Sarah Sze, Sleepers, 2024, mixed media, paper, strings, video projectors, and aluminum, dimensions variable. Denver Art Museum: Modern and Contemporary Art acquisition funds and support from David Gill, Nisha and Viraj Mehta, and Takeo Obayashi, 2024.897.1-3.

Fuse Box: Sarah Sze
On view through July 2026
Hamilton Building, Level 4

The Denver Art Museum is proud to debut Sleepers, a recently acquired new media installation by internationally acclaimed artist and 2003 MacArthur Fellow Sarah Sze.

In Sleepers, a six-channel video installation, moving images are projected onto over 300 hand-torn paper screens suspended from parallel lines of string. Sze’s visuals of landscapes, still-lifeism and portraits celebrate the mundane and the extraordinary, the personal and the universal, the eternal and the ephemeral, exploring our relationship with an ever-changing digital world.

Since the late 1990s, Sze has created expansive and idiosyncratic sculptures that begin with fractal-like compositions and explode into architectural space. Suffusing her dynamic constellations of everyday objects and materials with moving image projections, Sze conflates physical and digital environments to bring us closer to our current reality. To create Sleepers, the artist filmed and recorded using her iPhone and culled from various online stock footage libraries. Sleepers is Sze’s first artwork with recorded and edited sound, with everyday life serving as the primary focus of her work.

Fuse Box is a project space dedicated to the presentation of significant new media artworks created by artists recognized for their pioneering practices in film, video, sound, animation, and computer programming, including gaming, internet art, virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, machine learning, and other nascent technologies.

To learn more, click here.

Installation view, Spacetime and Landscapes, Lake Songshan Wangye Museum, Dongguan, China

Spacetime and Landscapes
Extended until September 15, 2025
Lake Songshan Wangye Museum
Dongguan, China

Due to overwhelming popularity, the exhibition Spacetime and Landscapes, featuring the work of Eric Zetterquist, photographer and founder of the esteemed Zetterquist Galleries, has been extended until September 15 at the Lake Songshan Wangye Museum in Dongguan, China!

Since its debut in November, the exhibition has drawn a steadily growing audience, captivated by its unique blend of cultural depth and visual innovation. Inspired by the museum’s rich collection of Chinese ceramics and antiquities, Zetterquist offers a contemporary reimagining of ancient artifacts. Through his meticulous lens, he isolates subtle details and explores negative space, transforming these objects into striking modern abstractions that echo the timeless beauty of their origins.

Spacetime and Landscapes invites viewers into a visual dialogue between East and West, past and present. By bridging classical traditions and minimalist aesthetics, the exhibition illuminates the shared human impulse to create, interpret, and reflect. This powerful cross-cultural narrative offers not only a feast for the eyes but also an opportunity for profound historical and philosophical reflection.

Don’t miss this opportunity to experience a show that transcends borders—both geographical and temporal!

To learn more about these works, click here.

Installation view, Susumu Shingu: Elated!

Susumu Shingu: Elated!
Closing Sunday, August 10, 2025

There’s still time to experience the solo exhibition of the acclaimed sculptor Susumu Shingu (b. 1937) at Japan Society before it closes August 10! Susumu Shingu: Elated!, marks the artist’s first solo museum exhibition in New York City and features his mesmerizing sculptures that make visible the invisible forces of wind, heat, and gravity, while encouraging a heightened awareness of the natural environment.

Since the 1960s, Susumu Shingu (b. 1937) has designed and engineered kinetic artworks that enliven parks, plazas, and public spaces around the globe. His traveling outdoor exhibition Windcircus completed a U.S. tour in 1988, visiting sites in New York; Fall River, Massachusetts; Chicago; Boston; and Los Angeles. Since 1989, his collaborations with Italian architect Renzo Piano (b. 1937), including Boundless Sky (1994) suspended in Kansai International Airport terminal building, have become world renowned. Shingu has also created several site-specific, monumental sculptures permanently installed in New York City: Dialog with the Sun (1995), Distant Sky (2012) and Rainbow Leaves (2021).

Celebrating Shingu’s long and impactful career, this exhibition encourages us to contemplate our changing climate while appreciating summer breezes, inside and beyond the gallery walls.

To learn more and plan your visit, click here.

Amida Raigo (Descent of Buddha Amitabha) detail, late 13th century, Japan, hanging scroll (detail), ink, color, and gold on silk, image only: H. 38 3/4 x W. 16 1/2 in. (98.4 x 41.9 cm); Asia Society, New York: Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection, 1979.191

(Re)Generations: Rina Banerjee, Byron Kim, and Howardena Pindell amid the Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection
Extended through January 4, 2026

Asia Society Museum is pleased to announce the extended run of its critically acclaimed exhibition, now on view through January 4, 2026. This innovative presentation offers a bold reimagining of the Museum’s renowned Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd Collection of pre-modern Asian art, seen anew through the eyes of three leading contemporary artists: Rina Banerjee, Byron Kim, and Howardena Pindell.

Bringing together the historic and the contemporary, each artist has selected works from the collection to engage with directly—placing their own new and existing artworks in conversation with centuries-old objects. Their interventions, drawn from diverse cultural backgrounds and artistic practices, open up unexpected and deeply personal dialogues with the past. Through these layered perspectives, the exhibition challenges singular narratives and invites viewers to reconsider what it means to connect across time, geography, and identity. Whether through Banerjee’s richly associative installations, Kim’s meditative abstraction, or Pindell’s textured and incisive works, each artist brings fresh insight into the collection’s enduring relevance and global resonance.

Don’t miss this rare opportunity to experience the Rockefeller Collection through a contemporary lens—expanded, recontextualized, and alive with new meaning!

To learn more, click here.

Courtesy Fu Qiumeng Fine Art

Light & Grain 秋麦 | Poetry Sharing Evening
Friday, August 8, 2025 from 6:30-8pm
65 East 80th St, NYC

Fu Qiumeng Fine Art is excited to host a special Poetry Sharing Evening on Friday, August 8 from 6:30-8pm, as part of the public programming for Light & Grain 秋麦.

In his recent Within the Gates series, Michael Cherney explores the expressive possibilities of bilingual visual language, translating poetry into calligraphic form to transcend linguistic boundaries and create spaces for shared reflection. Many works in the exhibition unfold as poetic narratives suspended across slices of time and space, contemplating nature, revisiting historical figures or events, or tracing personal and collective memory. Unlike the suggestive imagery that language often evokes, Cherney’s photographic poetics frequently operate through omission and absence, inviting viewers to engage with what lies unspoken or unseen.

For this event, we warmly invite guests to share poems that resonate personally, regardless of language, origin, or authorship. Participants may choose to read favorite poems by others, present their compositions, or share translations that bridge languages and traditions. In the spirit of the exhibition, this evening hopes to create a space where words and images, presence and suggestion, meet, offering a quiet encounter with poetry’s capacity to transcend form.

Don’t miss out on this special evening – RSVP here!