Celebrating Asian Art

July 15, 2022-January 2, 2024
Woven Elegance: Bamboo Baskets from the Thoma Collection is a series of three installations of approximately 15 baskets each, that will survey the outstanding accomplishments of Japanese basket makers active since the 19th century to the present day from three regions of Japan: the Kansai region, which encompasses the ancient capital, Kyoto; the Kanto region, which stretches westward from Tokyo; and the southernmost island of Kyushu. The exhibition demonstrates the specific techniques and styles of cutting and weaving bamboo that are particular to each of these geographic regions.

Listening to Bamboo: An Unrivaled Japanese Art Form
Live and online lecture, September 20, 2022, 6pm
Robert T. Coffland will trace the development of Japanese bamboo basketry into an art form. This evolution started in the early Meiji period and continues today. Through this presentation, Coffland would like the audience to consider seeing the artists’ creations as sculpture.

Robert T. Coffland is one of the world’s leading experts on Japanese bamboo. He is the author of Contemporary Japanese Bamboo Arts, The Bamboo Basket Art of Higashi Takesonsai, and Hin: The Quiet Beauty of Japanese Bamboo Art. Coffland founded TAI Gallery which introduced contemporary Japanese art to the American public. Coffland and his late wife, Mary Hunt Kahlenberg, mounted two major exhibitions in Japan, Mother Earth/Father Sky: Two Views of Nature and Matisse’s Secret: Kuba Textiles from Zaire, which also traveled to museums in the US.

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Permanent Collection
In 1990 museum trustees Walter F. and Lenora Brown began donating what has grown to over 500 Asian objects, mostly Chinese ceramics. With additional later acquisitions, the Museum's collection of Asian art is now among the finest in the nation. The collection was installed in its new and dedicated space, the 15,000-square-foot Lenora and Walter F. Brown Asian Art Wing, in 2005. With the installation in 2019 on the museum's grounds of a 12-foot-high, six-and-a-half ton Taihu Rock, gifted by San Antonio's sister city Wuxi in China, the Asian art collection became part of SAMA's riverview.