Archive
MUSEUMS CLOSE ACROSS THE MIDWEST DUE TO LOW TEMPERATURES!
This is the Anish Kapoor Cloud Gate at Millennium Park, Chicago.
Chicago’s museums are mostly closed due to severe weather conditions with some temperatures as low as -51 F (-46 C ).
The Art Institute, the Field Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art are closed today, Wednesday. So are the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Toledo Museum of Art and the Dayton Art Institute.
Come to Texas and visit our museums!!!
Cheers,
Elisabeth
THE TRAMMEL AND MARGARET CROW FAMILY HAS DONATED THEIR ENTIRE COLLECTION OF ASIAN ART
THE TRAMMEL AND MARGARET CROW FAMILY HAS DONATED THEIR ENTIRE COLLECTION OF ASIAN ART – INCLUDING THE MUSEUM, INCLUDING 23 MILLION IN SUPPORT FUNDS, INCLUDING A 12,000 BOOK LIBRARY TO THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS.
This move is comparable to the Asian art gift Avery Brundage gave to the City of San Francisco over 50 years ago eventually founding the ASIAN in SFO.
My first experience with the Crow’s Asian art happened in the late 1980s when my mother was visiting from Vienna and decided to stay at the Anatole in Dallas. The Anatole (one of the Crow hotels I later learned) was lovely but it was the large Indian marble temple and the Khmer sculptures in the lobby and in glass cases that immediately caught may attention. And then I learned more and more about the Crow collection, and over twenty years ago the Trammel and Margaret Crow Museum of Asian Art opened on Flora in Dallas with works from Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Thailand, Tibet and Vietnam, with the famous jade room at its center. I understand that the collection comprises some one thousand pieces of art.
The Museum will continue to operate in its current location with a full schedule of exhibits with items from ancient to contemporary times. And its long time director Amy Lewis Hofland will continue in her role for both museum sites. So beyond the original idea of Mr. Crow of increasing the public’s knowledge about and appreciation for Asian art, the University of Texas at Dallas is continuing to help students and to a larger extent the Texas community appreciate and learn about Asian art. I could not be happier about this for Texas!
Cheers,
Elisabeth
GLIMPSE OF ANCIENT YEMEN
Exhibit at Freer Sackler until August 18, 2019<
https://www.freersackler.si.edu
We often associate frankincense and myrrh with Yemen – if you wish to learn more about what was there since ancient times and what is being destroyed now, go and see this exhibit and also read this blog about
ANCIENT WOMEN SPEAK OUT – TODAY!!!!
https://www.freersackler.si.edu/ancient-women-speak-out-today/
Fascinating and sad. Looting has gone on for centuries on this crossroad of international trade between the Mediterranean region, Asia and the Middle East, but the vicious multisided war has now been going on since 2015 with no end in sight.
No cheers,
Elisabeth
Rembrandt and the Inspiration of India
Rembrandt, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and drawings of Mughal portraits ?
Where did Rembrandt see Indian Mughal portraits? We are not sure where he might have seen such portraits; one opinion is that they were in Schoenbrunn Palace in Vienna and were painted over in the 18th century. Rembrandt had enough access to things Indian, he collected several Indian antiques, imported by the VOC and brought to Amsterdam; and Rembrandt was curious in subject matters beyond European and biblical scenes. This exhibition shows side by side Mughal originals and some 25 of Rembrandt’s drawings of the same subject.
Cheers,
Elisabeth
GANESHA:THE PLAYFUL PROTECTOR
Six-armed dancing Ganesha from India, Denver Art Museum.
GANESHA:THE PLAYFUL PROTECTOR
An exhibit developed in collaboration with the National Museum of Cambodia, Phnom Penh.
https://denverartmuseum.org/exhibitions/ganesha
On view through January 13, 2019
Enough time to travel to Denver and visit Ganesha in person- the remover of obstacles, known for granting wealth and success, found throughout the Asian subcontinent and across geographical and religious lines.
Cheers,
Elisabeth
Cambodian Ganesha
THE HUMAN FIGURE IN ISLAMIC ART
The David Collection
THE HUMAN FIGURE IN ISLAMIC ART, The David Collection, Copenhagen
davidmus.dk
This issue has always interested and puzzled me.
There is still uncertainty with regard to attitudes about figurative art in Islamic culture. This exhibit in Denmark – now closed – tackled the delicate issue, together with a great catalogue. An article in May 2018 ASIAN ART by JULIET HIGHET and titled THE HUMAN FIGURE IN ISLAMIC ART explains what we know and what we do not know about figurative art. She reports that there is no explicit passage in the Qur’an forbidding figurative depictions of humans. It is the written traditions that are more critical on this subject; and three dimensional portrayals seem to be more objectionable than paintings because sculptures and reliefs express a greater reality of a divinely created world. We find human figures in paintings and we find and we see the Prophet’s partially hidden face together with his winged steed Buraq – often – with a female face. So what are we to believe? It might help to keep in perspective the world of politics during the early times of Islam, the Islamic revolt against Christian Byzantine symbolism, and the influence of Persian portraiture painters. Great art patrons like Akhbar and his son Jahangir and his grandson Shah Jahan all encouraged local and imported artists in their own traditions portraying more human figures. And it helped me to keep in mind that religious art and human figures in churches and temples played a great public role whereas figurative art in Islamic art was often developed for and in the private realm.
The author Juliet Highet is a writer, journalist and photographer who writes and publishes on a wide range of Arab, South Asian, East Asian and African cultures. One of her books is: Frankincense: Oman’s Gift to the World. Got to order this one….
Cheers,
Elisabeth
THE VANISHING STEPWELL OF INDIA
Water -harvesting system below ground………thousands of years old…….
The book THE VANISHING STEPWELL OF INDIA, by Vitoria Lautman, foreword by Divay Gupta, Merrell Publisher explores
75 subterranean wells throughout India. Stepwells serve a number of purposes in addition to providing a community with water – – they were civic centers, active places for worship as well as refuges from the challenging climate. Each successive subterranean level often was with beautiful Hindu and islamic influenced architectural pavilions providing shade. During the 19th century it is estimated that several thousands of stepwells were in operation. Over time they silted up and were filled in but recently an effort has started to reactivate and de-silt step wells to once again collect water.
Cheers,
Elisabeth
COROMANDEL SCREENS ANYONE??
Courtesy Metropolitan Museum
COROMANDEL SCREENS ANYONE??
Many of us have seen, appraised, bought, sold so-called Coromandel screens. Chinese lacquer screens often with red, brown or black ground with large landscape and pavilions scenes and often scenes of dancers illustrating Ming dynasty and earlier theatrical dramas. We call the screens Coromandels screens but the term came into use only at the beginning of the 20th century. Coromandel because the screens were shipped from China via India’s Coromandel Coast of southeast India. In China the term for these screen was and is kuancai – meaning that the artisans hollowed out, carved and incised many layers of dried lacquer and filled in the gaps with colored lacquer or silver or gold. A time consuming technique.
Not much is written about Coromandel screens and this article in The Oriental Ceramic Society’s May 2018 Newsletter by HE Feng, a Ph.D. candidate at the Institute of East Asian Art History at Heidelberg University explains the history of these screens exported from China since the late 1700s.
PEACOCK IN THE DESERT, THE ROYAL ARTS OF JODHPUR, INDIA
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston until August 19, 2018
https://www.mfah.org/…/peacock-in-desert-royal-arts-jodhpur…
Seattle Art Museum, October 18, 2018 to January 19, 2019
Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, later
The exhibition with splendid objects mainly from the Mehrangarh Museum Trust and private collections of the royal family of Jodhpur focuses on lavish ceremonial objects, sumptuous jewels, intricately carved furniture, a silver howdah, a monumental 17th century court tent for a durbar, a collection of paintings, arms, jewelry (many pieces from the Al- Sabah Collection, Kuwait,), a stainless steel Rolls-Royce polished to look like silver, – all objects of exquisite taste collected over some five hundred centuries by the rulers of the Marwar-Jodhpur region and the Rathore dynasty that ruled for some 700 years. The exhibit shows physical treasures and also demonstrates the care of the Maharaja of Marwar-Jodhpur GajSingh II with regard to his inherited legacy – land, buildings and people.
Bought the heavy book catalogue with hundreds of photographs and a very welcome glossary !
Go and see!!
Cheers,
Elisabeth
Lands of Asia
http://landsofasia.kimbellart.org
Until August 19th, 2018
Another very substantial Asian art exhibit in Texas- at the Kimbell Art Museum in Ft. Worth.
Between the Crow Collection Dallas, the Fine Arts Museum in Houston, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Asia Society Texas, Houston, the San Antonio Museum of Art, and most of all the Kimbell, Asian art lovers feel very fortunate in Texas.
Collected by Sam and Myrna Myers after they were posted in Paris in the mid 1960s, and eventually assembling some five thousand works of art including Asian, Roman and Greek antiquities. Driven by a passion for Asia, the Myers soon started to concentrate on East Asian pieces, particularly in jade, silk, porcelain and other refined materials.
Cheers,
Elisabeth
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