UPCOMING EVENT
Family Festival: Lunar New Year
Sunday, February 9, 10am-3pm
Free with Admission
Ring in the Year of the Snake with hands-on activities for kids all afternoon from workshops with local artists to an interactive storytime!
To learn more, click here.
Cha Teapot / Alessi
Naoto Fukasawa: Things in Themselves
Through April 20, 2025
Main Building, Collab Gallery 219
With an approach to functional design that prioritizes ease of use, aesthetic simplicity, and close attention to the ways that mundane objects and environments record our everyday habits, Tokyo-based product designer Naoto Fukasawa has been a hugely influential force in design for more than two decades. Best-known for his prior work as design director of MUJI—the Japanese “anti-brand” consumer goods company—Fukasawa has designed across a broad range of categories and media. Whether shaping electronics for a global market or collaborating with artisanal firms on fine furniture, Fukasawa advocates for a design philosophy of longevity, accessibility, and subtle humor over novelty, ephemerality, or blatant commercialism.
Presenting fully-realized production designs alongside the studio’s working sketches and models for select projects, Things in Themselves offers a rare opportunity to explore Fukasawa’s design ethos—prizing an essential “fit” between objects, users, and their environments—and creative process. This exhibition accompanies the 2024 Collab Design Excellence Award, and marks the first major solo presentation of Fukasawa’s work at a U.S. museum.
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Platter from the “Rousseau” Service, 1866-1875, Félix-Joseph-Auguste Bracquemond (1244) (Artist/Maker), François-Eugène Rousseau (27332) (Made for), Lebeuf-Milliet et Cie, Creil and Montereau, France, Glazed faience with transfer and hand coloring, 27 1/2 × 10 3/4 inches (69.9 × 27.3 cm)
Firing the Imagination: Japanese Influence on French Ceramics, 1860-1910
August 31, 2024 – May 26, 2025
This exhibition brings together notable examples of French ceramics that demonstrate tremendous innovation in the field of artistic pottery from the 1860s to 1910s. European artists during this period were deeply influenced by Japanese art, including woodblock prints, ceramics, textiles, and lacquerwares, which poured into Europe following the forced reopening of Japan’s ports to foreign trade in the 1850s. Part of a broader cultural phenomenon that came to be known as “Japonisme,” artists such as Félix Bracquemond, Ernest Chaplet, Théodore Deck, François Laurin, and Albert-Louis Dammouse incorporated subjects, decorations, and forms inspired by Japanese art into their ceramics while also experimenting with new techniques like barbotine (a method of decorating ceramics with colored clay slips) and glazes imitating highly prized examples of East Asian ceramics.
The works on view come from the collection of Larry A. Simms, a retired New Jersey public schoolteacher who amassed one of the most important private collections of “Japonisme” ceramics in the United States, many of which he has now donated to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
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Jar with a Mythical Qilin, Lion, and Elephant, Artist/maker unknown. Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province, China, Asian. Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). Porcelain with underglaze blue, polychrome enamel, and gilt decoration (Jingdezhen ware). 22 1/8 x 12 3/8 inches (56.2 x 31.4 cm)
Mythical Creatures: China and the World
December 21, 2023 – June 1, 2025
Mythical creatures fascinate and capture the imagination of people across the globe. Whether benevolent or fearsome, they serve an important purpose – to help humans make sense of the world. This exhibition explores the theme of diversity by bringing together mythical creatures from China as well as across Asia and Europe. Representations of paintings, prints, sculptures, ceramics, textiles, and contemporary toy bricks, dating from the 1000s to today illustrate how these fantastical beasts, although sometimes perceived as the same, are quite different. Among the contemporary works are those by artists Xu Bing and Ai Weiwei inspired by ancient myths and legends that continue to shape the way we think about our lives today.
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ONGOING EXHIBITIONS
Mythical, Divine, Demonic: Animal Imagery in South Asian Art
Animals appear everywhere in the art of South Asia. One encounters them as gods with animal heads, powerful creatures that act as the mounts and companions of the gods, and fearsome beasts that spread destruction and chaos. While many animals are revered because they are seen as protective and as signs of good fortune, others inspire fear or require appeasement.
Our exhibition, Mythical, Divine, Demonic: Animal Imagery in South Asian Art, explores how single animals are interpreted in myriad ways across various regions and cultures. Different representations show how animals serve an array of artistic and symbolic functions. For example, depictions of serpents in connection to the great god Vishnu might be seen as helpful or demonic depending on the context.
Works in the exhibition are clustered into four groups that broadly focus on the lion, the serpent, the man-eagle, and composite beings who are a mixture of animals or part human and part animal. Through examining these objects, audiences will gain a deeper understanding of how animals play a complex role in world cultures.
To learn more, click here.
Collecting Japanese Art in Philadelphia
The 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia was the first world’s fair held in the United States and also the beginning of Japanese art collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Over nearly 150 years that followed, the museum’s Japanese art collection expanded and diversified. Drawn from the works highlighted in the new publication Art of Japan: Highlights from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the selections in this installation—ranging from ceramics, metalwork, painting, lacquerware, to contemporary bamboo art—showcase the breadth of Japanese art, and also spotlight the people—collectors, donors, curators—who were instrumental in shaping the collection.
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Collection Highlight: Ceremonial Teahouse
The name of this teahouse, Sunkaraku (Evanescent Joys), reflects the spirit of the traditional Japanese tea ceremony as a temporary refuge from the complexities of daily life. The architecture reveals a special delight in natural materials, such as bamboo and cedar. Using elements from an eighteenth-century teahouse, Ōgi Rodō designed this retreat around 1917 for the grounds of his Tokyo home. Acquired by the museum from the architect in 1928, this is the only example of his work outside Japan.
Collection Highlight: Temple Hall
The more than sixty carved granite elements that comprise this monumental space were collected by Philadelphian Adeline Pepper Gibson during a visit in 1912 to Madurai, a city in the south of India known for its spectacular Hindu temples. Debuting to the public in the museum’s original home at Memorial Hall in 1920, the mandapam opened at its current location in 1940. Although a reconstruction, it incorporates many original architectural elements and provides visitors with a unique opportunity to experience the extraordinary synthesis of sculpture, architecture, and symbol that characterizes South India’s elaborate temple form.
Arts of the Islamic World
Islam began over 1,400 years ago in the Arabian Peninsula and soon spread across Asia, Africa, and Europe. Today Muslims live on every continent and make up a quarter of the world’s population. The term “Islamic Art” refers to a variety of artwork made by and for Muslims over the centuries. Here are some exquisite examples drawn from the museum’s collection.
To view all these exhibitions, click here.
