Shivalal (Indian, active 1858–93). Maharana Fateh Singh crossing a river during the monsoon. Northwestern India, Rajasthan, Rajput Kingdom of Mewar, Udaipur, 1893. Opaque watercolor

A Splendid Land: Paintings from Royal Udaipur
June 11-September 10, 2023

Around 1700, artists in Udaipur (a court in northwest India) began creating immersive paintings that convey the mood (bhava) of the city’s palaces, lakes, and mountains. These large paintings and their emphasis on lived experience have never been the focus of an exhibition.

With dazzling paintings on paper and cloth—many on public view for the first time—A Splendid Land reveals how artists visualized emotions, depicted places, celebrated water resources, and fostered personal bonds over two hundred years in the rapidly changing political and cultural landscapes of early modern South Asia.

The exhibition is organized as a journey that begins at Udaipur’s center and continues outward: first to the city, then to the countryside, and finally to the cosmos.

This exhibition has been cocurated by Debra Diamond, the Elizabeth Moynihan Curator for South Asian and Southeast Asian Art at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, and Dipti Khera, associate professor, Department of Art History and Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.

For more information, click here.

Design Miami/Basel 2023, Thomsen Gallery
Basel, Switzerland, 13-18 June 2023

Thomsen Gallery is delighted to participate for the fourth time in Design Miami/Basel with Japanese modern and contemporary art. If you are in Switzerland during the Art Basel week, please visit them in Hall 1 Süd at Messe Basel at booth G06.

Thomsen's exhibition at Design Miami / Basel offers a select group of Japanese bamboo ikebana baskets by the great masters from the first half of the 20th century, considered the Golden Age of Japanese basketry, along with works by contemporary makers. The baskets are complemented by Japanese modern bronze vessels, contemporary porcelain vessels by Sueharu Fukami and gold-lacquer boxes.

Tuesday, June 13/ 10am–7pm
Wednesday, June 14/ 10am–7pm
Thursday, June 15/ 11am–7pm
Friday, June 16/ 11am–7pm
Saturday, June 17/ 11am–7pm
Sunday, June 18/ 11am–6pm

Read more, click here.

Indian, Andhra Pradesh, Picchwai, late 18th century, cotton with pigments, gold and silver paint, 74 × 52 in. (188 × 132.1 cm), Banoo and Jeevak Parpia Collection.

Woven Wonders: Indian Textiles from the Parpia Collection

June 10-September 4, 2023

The Parpia Collection is one of the most significant private collections of Indian textiles outside of India and one of the most important in the United States. Woven Wonders: Indian Textiles from the Parpia Collection brings this extraordinary collection to Houston audiences for the first time.

Assembled to reflect India’s myriad range of regional traditions, the Parpia Collection includes singular pieces that showcase the extraordinary aesthetic and technical diversity of Indian textiles. From folk textiles to the most sophisticated court textiles, produced from the 14th to early 20th centuries, the collection illustrates the preeminence of textile arts produced in India with examples of hand-painted and hand-block-printed cotton, embroidery, ikat, tie-dye, brocade, and tapestry.

Woven Wonders: Indian Textiles from the Parpia Collection is organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and co-curated by Amy Poster, Consulting Curator, MFAH, and Rosemary Crill, former Senior Curator at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

Ithaca, New York–based collectors Banoo and Jeevak Parpia have been collecting textiles from India since the 1980’s. They have been involved with the Museum since 2018, first as guest speakers on India’s global textile traditions, and then as experts to help survey and review selections from the Museum’s Annette Finnigan Collection.

For more information about the exhibition and related events, click here.

Kamisaka Sekka, Hydrangeas, from the series “World of Things (Momoyogusa),” 1904-1915. Mr. and Mrs. Hubert Fischer Fund. The Art Institute of Chicago

The Arranged Flower: Ikebana and Flora in Japanese Prints will be on view at the Art Institute of Chicago until July 9, 2023.

The artful display of flowers in Japanese culture known as ikebana (ike means “to arrange,” and bana or hana means “flowers”) likely originated with arrangements dedicated to Buddhist deities in temples, where the presentations sought to capture the beauty of paradise.

Japan’s first formal school of flower arranging developed in the 15th century, and ikebana remains a prominent and disciplined manifestation of a larger focus on nature in Japanese culture. The practice emphasizes the lines formed by the placement of the leaves, branches, and twigs and, when successful, conveys a sense of harmony among the plants, their vessels, and their settings.

The prints in this presentation largely date to the Edo period (1615–1868), when an intense interest in botany flourished hand-in-hand with ikebana at all levels of society. The arrangements shown are formal and informal, ordinary, and fantastic. What they share is an appreciation for natural beauty often overlooked in everyday life.

Mimasu Daigorō IV as Umeōmaru (right panel); Nakamura Utaemon IV as Matsuōmaru (center panel); and Jitsukawa Ensaburō as Sakuramaru (left panel), 1851, Konishi Hirosada (also called Gosōtei Hirosada) (Japanese, active 1826-1863, died c. 1865) Published by Daijin, Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Scandal & Virtue: Staging Kabuki in Osaka can be seen at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through July 24.

This installation examines the way Kabuki actor prints in Japan during the Edo period (1615—1868) functioned as conduits of fame and scandal. Explore the role of Kabuki actors as celebrities, the influence of the government, and fan culture. Grounded in Osaka’s actor print and Kabuki fan culture, the installation interweaves prints produced in Edo (modern-day Tokyo) to explore topics of censorship and fandom as well as tales of banishment and rivalry.

In 2008, Jack Shear gifted the museum 525 Osaka prints increasing opportunities for nuanced discussions about the unique print culture in Osaka during the Edo period. A selection of images from this gift alongside other actor prints from the museum’s collection encourages connecting with Edo period Kabuki fandom and celebrity culture by drawing parallels with contemporary fan culture.