Oka Kazuma (1882-1956), Bar Bacchus in Ginza, from the series Pictures of Ginza, First Series,
January 1929, Gift of the artist

Recollections of Tokyo: 1923-1945
July 2-September 25, 2022

This weekend, the Art Institute of Chicago opens two new engaging Asian art exhibitions

Tokyo was devastated by the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923 but developed at an astounding rate over the next few decades. During this period, a number of printmakers documented their impressions of both the ruin of the city and its rebirth. In this Japanese print exhibition, the representation of lost buildings and outmoded entertainments can remind us of time’s passage and the ever-changing nature of a dynamic urban metropolis.

Covered Vase, Qing dynasty (1664–1912), reign of the Kangxi Emperor (1662–1722).
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Bud Berman

Among Friends and Family
July 2-September 25, 2022
The many cultures and traditions across Asia offer countless examples of visually beautiful and emotionally profound art reflecting the importance of time spent with loved ones. The Among Friends and Family exhibition presents a selection of objects from China, Japan, and Korea that portray some of the gatherings that invigorate both everyday life and special occasions.

Cap, Qing dynasty (1644–1912), 18th–19th century. Promised gift of Barbara and David Kipper

While at the museum, be sure to also see the familiar yet rare objects in Kingfisher Headdresses from China, currently on view through May 2023. By the Song dynasty (960–1278), portraits of empresses showed them wearing headdresses adorned with kingfisher ornaments. Few examples of this fragile artistry have survived, and the earliest ones come from the tomb of the Wanli Emperor (reigned 1572–1620), in which archaeologists found four elaborate kingfisher crowns worn by his empresses.

Koike Shōko (born 1943), Narrow-footed pleated shell-shaped covered container, 2013, glazed stoneware, 14 1/4 x 14 in. Photography by Richard Goodbody. Courtesy of Joan B Mirviss LTD

Listening to Clay: The Artists, Curators, and Collectors who Listen
Online Zoom program, July 26, 2022 at 5pm EDT

To celebrate the publication of Listening to Clay: The Artists, Curators, and Collectors who Listen, authors Alice and Halsey North and Louise Allison Cort discuss in depth their personal relationships with these sixteen artists that formed the basis for this book. From the perspective of collecting, they offer a behind-the-scenes look at these artists gleaned over many years and share valuable insights into their artworks. They are joined by Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Monika Bincsik, who recounts the importance of the importance of the Norths’ gift to the Met. In her recent installation of the main balcony, she re-contextualizes these artists in conversation with Western artists.

PANELISTS:
MONIKA BINCSIK, Diane and Arthur Abbey Associate Curator for Japanese Decorative Arts, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
LOUISE CORT, Curator Emerita, National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.
ALICE and HALSEY NORTH, Japanese clay art collectors and museum patrons
Moderated by JOAN B. MIRVISS

The book can be ordered now through the publisher Monacelli Press/Phaidon or purchased through Joan B Mirviss LTD in July.

To register for this free event, click here. A confirmation email will be automatically sent to you once you register.

Yes, Wonderful Things, Oliver Forge Brendan Lynch
July 1-8, 2022

A hundred years ago, in November 1922, these words were uttered by Howard Carter, when he and Lord Carnarvon, after years of searching, finally peered into the tomb of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings which had remained miraculously untouched and well-preserved for millennia. A century earlier in September 1822, Jean-François Champollion, the French scholar often called the Father of Egyptology, revealed his ground-breaking decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs laying the foundation for the study and understanding of the ancient Egyptians with the words “I’ve done it”.

To commemorate these two momentous events, Oliver Forge and Brendan Lynch in collaboration with Claire Brown Art, announce an exhibition devoted exclusively to Ancient Egyptian Art which will be held at our new premises, 16-17 Pall Mall.

Read more, including an online catalogue, click here.

Ren Yi, Demon Queller, Zhong Kui, 1882, ink and color on paper, 65 ½ x 30 ¾ in.
The Clyde and Helen Wu Collection of Chinese Painting, Gift of Dr. Clyde Wu

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. Examples from the collection are now on view in three exhibitions through November 2022.

Understanding an Eighteenth-Century Indian Album
This exhibition brings together several manuscript pages featuring exquisite paintings of musical modes, given to Yale in 1939 and 1940. The display locates their production in late 18th-century northern India and presents a selection of textiles and ceramics similar to those illustrated in these pages.

Chinese Painting between War and Revolution, 1830–1950
This show highlights the vibrancy and experimentation with Western and Japanese visual traditions that characterized Chinese painting during the tumultuous period between the Opium War (1839–42) and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.

Sakura: Cherry Blossoms
Celebrating the varied rendering of cherries in paintings, woodblock prints, lacquer, and metalwork, Sakura: Cherry Blossoms explores the longstanding Japanese fascination with the beauty of this delicate blossom as a symbol for the ephemeral nature of life and its pleasures.

In addition, the recent gift Rain Washes the Body, Enlightenment Cleanses the Soul (2017), a painting by contemporary Korean artist Kim GuGu, is temporarily shown with stone and bronze sculpture from Asia’s multifaceted religious traditions. These less fragile sculptures, together with ceramics and metalwork objects from across Asia, remain permanently on view.

Read more, click here

Crystal Ball, 19th–early 20th century, Chinese, 1944-20-2a,b

Authentic: Truth and Perception in Chinese Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art
Concludes July 3, 2022

Explore the act of copying and how attitudes toward authenticity are nuanced and culturally specific. Discover the intention behind the work and compare contemporary views on authenticity with those of the past. Highlights include enamel-decorated imperial porcelains, rock crystal carvings and woodblock prints.

Tuan Andrew Nguyen, The Specter of Ancestors Becoming, 2019 4-channel video installation, Commissioned by Sharjah Art Foundation and produced by Sharjah Art Foundation with additional production support from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan, New York.

Asia Society Texas
Making Home: Artists and Immigration
Exhibition through July 3
Making Home: Artists and Immigration focuses on immigration and related themes through the works of Phung Huynh, Beili Liu, Tuan Andrew Nguyen, and Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya. The exhibition engages with the individual, lived experiences of immigration through the paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures, and installations of the four featured artists. Making Home centers on the complexities of deeply personal histories of immigration, as the artists consider topics of intergenerationality, the repercussions of colonial histories, dislocation, memory, otherness, belonging, and resilience.

Docent-led tours of Making Home allow visitors to experience art on a personal level, learn about art historical periods and styles, and hear stories associated with the artwork. In-person tours are available for this exhibition at 11am on Saturday, July 2. Also available on Saturday at 10am is a docent-led Architecture Tour of Asia Society's iconic and unique Center designed by Yoshio Taniguchi.
Read more, click here

Asia Society Japan
JapanCraft21: Building a Movement
In-person and online program, July 5 8am Tokyo time/July 4 7pm EDT
JapanCraft21 Director Steve Beimel will take a hard look at the current situation around Japan’s Master Crafts tradition — why the system is faltering, what can be done to turn it around, and the actions that JapanCraft21 is taking.
Read more and register, click here.

A Rare and Large Kesi “Peach” Panel, 19tn-20th century, hanging scroll, 90⅜ x 47¼ in. (229.6 x 120 cm), Lot 71, Estimate: $30,000-40,000

CHINA/5000 YEARS, Sotheby’s New York
Online auction June 17-29

CHINA/5000 YEARS features a selection of over 130 Ming and Qing porcelains and textiles, early ceramics, bronzes, jades, Asian and Chinese art reference books, and other Chinese works of art. Highlights include a large famille-rose ‘peach’ vase (Tianqiuping), a late Shang/early Western Zhou dynasty archaic bronze ritual wine vessel (Zhi), a selection of Ming and Qing porcelains from a New York private collection, and a group of early ceramics from a Canadian private collection.

Read more, click here.

Miwa Kyūwa (Miwa Kyūsetsu X) (1895-1981), White Hagi square vase in the form of a handled bucket, ca. 1965, glazed stoneware, 12 1/2 x 6 3/4 x 6 3/8 in.

Branching Out:
The Kaneshige Family and the Bizen Tradition
The Miwa Family and the Hagi Tradition
Joan B Mirviss LTD
Live and online exhibition, closes June 30, 2022

The widespread popularity and distinguished reputations that Japan’s ancient ceramic traditions enjoy today are largely indebted to a core group of mid-twentieth century artistic visionaries: among them, Kaneshige Tōyō (1896-1967) for Bizen ware and Miwa Kyūwa (1895-1981) for Hagi ware. Both men were inheritors to their highly esteemed, long-established, multi-generational family names that had been associated with excellence in their respective ceramic traditions for centuries. Together with scholar-potter Kawakita Handeishi (1878-1963), they co-founded the artistic discussion group Karahinekai in 1942, formed of artists who were dedicated to the recovery of lost techniques from the golden age of ceramics during the 16th century Momoyama period.

The gallery's website includes an online catalogue, as well as links to articles on the show by Ceramics Now, Antiques Trade Gazette, and Yomitime.

Read more, click here

Emi Anrakuji (born 1963), Untitled 8, early 2000s, archival pigment print on a vintage postcard
(circa 1900s), 3 1/2 x 5 3/8 in (8.9 x 13.8 cm) (image), @Emi Anrakuji

Emi Anrakuji: Ehagaki–Picture Postcard, MIYAKO YOSHINAGA
Through June 30

Emi Anrakuji is known for taking obscured and often close-up images of herself (all but her eyes) in mundane surroundings with evocative atmospheres. This exhibition features over 30 color-pigment self-portraits that Anrakuji meticulously printed on vintage postcards (in Japanese, ehagaki – picture postcard) collected by her grandfather at the turn of the last century. The grandfather, a wine importer in Tokyo, frequently traveled to Europe and brought back these postcards, a popular novelty among collectors especially from the 1890s to the 1910s. According to Anrakuji’s family lore, a box of the well-preserved old postcards miraculously survived the 1923 earthquake and the WWII air raids in 1945. On both occasions, the fire burned down the city of Tokyo almost entirely, including her grandfather’s shop. Therefore, these postcards became a family treasure passed down through the generations.

Be sure to read Loring Knoblauch's in-depth review of this exhibition in Collector Daily online, click here.

Read more about the exhibition, click here.

Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva with Six Light Bodhisattvas, Joseon dynasty (1392-1910), 16th–17th century

The Afterlife Journey: Divine Protectors and Guides in Korean Buddhist Painting, The Art Institute of Chicago
In-person lecture by Professor Cheeyun Lilian Kwon
June 30, 4-5pm CDT

Cheeyun Lilian Kwon, professor at the School of Fine Arts, Hongik University, Seoul, will discuss the Ksitigarbha painting in the Art Institute’s collection. Influenced by an unique amalgamation of various sources, Korea adopted a vision of the afterlife that was protected by the Ksitigarbha bodhisattva and accompanied by a host of heavenly beings. In this talk, Professor Kwon will discuss the Ksitigarbha painting in light of the Buddhist tradition that became deeply rooted in Korea for over a millennium. Such paintings acted as central agents in the Buddhist rituals dedicated for the dead in pre-modern Korea.

Professor Kwon teaches in the Arts and Cultural Management Department and the School of Fine Arts, Hongik University, Seoul. She received her PhD in East Asian art from Princeton University and taught Korean and East Asian art at American University and George Mason University. She also served as curator of Korean art at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco and curatorial consultant at the Freer and Sackler Galleries, Smithsonian Institution.

This program is generously funded by the National Museum of Korea.

Read more and to register, which is required, click here