More than 2500 extraordinary works from the museum’s collection are displayed in the museum’s permanent galleries. Artworks on view include monumental South Asian stone sculptures, luminous Chinese jades, vibrant Korean paintings, mystical Tibetan thangkas, serene Cambodian Buddhas, richly decorated Islamic manuscripts, and subtle Japanese ceramics.
Later Chinese Jades:
Ming Dynasty to Early Twentieth Century
November 10, 2007– August 17, 2008
Tateuchi Gallery
The core of the museum’s collection of Chinese jades was donated by Avery Brundage (1887–1975), an avid and discerning collector. Brundage formed most of his collection of approximately 1200 pieces between 1935 and 1960, a time when Western study of jade was in its infancy. Over the past decades considerable new information has become available in this field, both from archaeological discoveries and from careful research of period texts and of objects for which the date and history is well established. Much of this new research has been undertaken by experts in China.
In 1996 the Asian Art Museum began a systematic study of the jades in the Brundage collection. This included bringing a series of experts from China to survey the collection. The first was Yang Boda, ex–deputy director of the Palace Museum, Beijing, and a world-renowned specialist on Chinese jades who spent two months conferring with the museum’s curators. Following him was Mou Yongkang, Director of the Institute of Archaeology in Zhejiang province, and then Deng Shuping, the expert in Chinese jades at the Palace Museum in Taipei. |
Society for Asian Art 50th Anniversary Symposium
Avery Brundage: The Man, the Collection, the Legacy
Saturday, March 15, 10:30 am– 4:30 pm, Samsung Hall
$35 (includes box lunch).
Space limited, registration ends March 5. To register, contact the Society for Asian Art: saa@asianart.org or (415) 581-3701.
Celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Society for Asian Art at this symposium that explores and honors the man whose collection made the Asian Art Museum possible as well as the organization whose determination secured the collection for the city of San Francisco. Consisting of some 8,000 objects, the Brundage Collection forms the core of the Asian Art Museum's holdings. Its depth and breadth reflect the grand passion of a keen collecting talent—a man possessed with the idea of creating a great museum devoted entirely to Asian art. Avery Brundage’s gift to the people of San Francisco was one of the most significant cultural benefactions of the twentieth century. The symposium weaves a colorful tale of intrigue and controversy centered on the larger-than-life collector among a cast of scholars, curators, and art dealers.
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Japanese Painting Techniques
Sunday, March 9 - Saturday, March 15
12:00 noon – 4:00 pm
Contemporary Japanese artist Fumiyo Yoshikawa demonstrates traditional Japanese painting methods like those employed in some of the paintings on view in Drama and Desire, such as grinding and purifying natural pigments, application of gold leaf and preparation of gold for painting, and the pooled pigment technique associated with indigenous Japanese painting. Make your own miniature version of a gold leaf covered Japanese screen.
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In a New Light: The Asian Art Museum Collection
More than 2500 extraordinary works from the museum’s collection are displayed in the museum’s permanent galleries. Artworks on view include monumental South Asian stone sculptures, luminous Chinese jades, vibrant Korean paintings, mystical Tibetan thangkas, serene Cambodian Buddhas, richly decorated Islamic manuscripts, and subtle Japanese ceramics.
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Images © Asian Art Museum • San Francisco, CA |
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