Latest news with #NationalMuseumofAsianArt
Deccan Herald
19-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Deccan Herald
Rich tapestry of cultural memories
Devotion, storytelling, and artistic splendour all come together to make 'Delighting Krishna: Paintings of the Child-God', an exhibition of pichwai paintings at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art in Washington DC, a sublime experience.
Indian Express
19-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
‘Printmaking from India is gaining attention and is an exciting area to explore': Carol Huh of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art
The human form is, perhaps, among the most popular subjects for artists. Indian artists, being no exceptions, have time and again resorted to body politics to address human rights, gender discrimination, environmental concerns and technological evolution. An ongoing exhibition, at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art (NMAA) in Washington DC, titled Body Transformed: Contemporary South Asian Photographs and Prints (till August 17), revisits these concerns through the lens of photography and printmaking. Featuring works by Jyoti Bhatt, Jitish Kallat, Navin Kishore, Chitra Ganesh and Vivek Vilasini, among others, it locates 'the place of the individual in contemporary society'.. In Yogini, for instance, Pushpamala N photographs herself dressed as a goddess. The staged representation beckons a commentary on the contradictory perception of the feminine and the divine–one that is worshipped is also trampled upon. Women are also at the centre of Chitra Ganesh's prints. Her print, A Delicate Line: Corpse She Was Holding (2010), reveals different layers to the persona of a woman when viewed from different angles, suggesting 'the ever-evolving state of the woman's body between disappearance and emergence, dissolution and creation'. For Untitled (Black) and Untitled (Red), both made in 2002, Kallat extracts the images of anonymous people on Mumbai streets. He then makes them explode by distorting them to depict the 'pressures and contradictions of life in the city'. In Jyoti Bhatt's Man and Machine (1975), the two titular entities become one to create a sort of Frankenstein's monster, eerily preemptive of the AI evolution that we see today. Carol Huh, NMAA Associate Curator of Contemporary Asian Art, in an email interview, talks about how contemporary Indian artists use photography and printmaking to redefine notions of identity and agency. Excerpts: For over two decades, we have been engaged with photography from India; NMAA Archives and collections include works dating from the mid-19th century to the present, and one of the largest museum holdings of works by Raghubir Singh (1942–1999). In recent years, gifts from the Umesh and Sunanda Gaur Collection have enhanced significantly the number of Indian artists represented at the NMAA, as well as introduced to the museum's holdings for the first time print works by Indian artists who have made important contributions to the field. The first exhibition drawing from the Gaur Collection, titled Unstill Waters (2022) featured photography, video and a few etchings. Body Transformed builds on that project by juxtaposing photographic works and a wider array of print techniques. The focus was rather on representations of the human form that are informed by South Asian social, cultural and aesthetic contexts. Both photography and printmaking are often not considered mainstream visual art practices. What was the intention behind turning the spotlight on these mediums? Photography as an artistic practice, and the contributions of South Asian artists, is well recognised generally, and at the NMAA in particular. Japanese prints are also a strength of the collections and curatorial expertise at NMAA. As such, printmaking from or related to India, which is beginning to gain attention, seemed like a fitting and exciting area to continue exploring. Social, political and technological developments of the twentieth century have had a profound impact on artistic approaches to the body as medium and subject. For each of the artists featured in this exhibition, the human form and the expressive power of photography and print media offer ways to examine the place of the individual in society. Works by Pushpamala N and Clare Arni, Vivek Vilasini, Ram Rahman and Naveen Kishore focus on the performing body to confront notions of social and cultural identity through photography, a medium that has played a complicated role in India since the nineteenth century. Jitish Kallat and Rashid Rana manipulate photographic images to simultaneously assert and dissolve the figure in jarring compositions that hover between reflections on the public being and the disquiet of the inner self. Master print artists Krishna Reddy, Jyoti Bhatt and Chitra Ganesh experiment with provocatively carved lines and vivid colors unique to printmaking. Fragmenting, morphing and multiplying the figure, these artists incorporate various processes to explore representations of power, place and sexuality in today's world. I was interested in showing different approaches to bodily imagery through particular mediums. As for curatorial approach, a number of factors shape an exhibition, including formal and conceptual relationships as one moves through the galleries, from one work to the next. Many works, including the ones by Naveen Kishore and Pushpamala N, look at the physical body vis a vis the metaphysical identity. For a viewer, both seem to appear at odds with one another. Your comments. In the examples by Pushpamala N. and Clare Arni, popularized images of the Indian woman are restaged using elaborate costuming, staging and painted backdrops in what Pushpamala N. calls 'photo-performances'. Yet elements of the compositions make apparent the disjunction between her photographed body and the artificially painted surroundings, and thus shift the viewer's attention from the subject to the performance in front of the camera. Altogether, these subtle disruptions subvert archetypes of the Indian woman and highlight the constructed nature of such representations. For Navin Kishore, I don't see the identities as being at odds. His work is an extended portrait that draws the viewer into an intimate experience of a profound transformation, and the performative dimension of identity.
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Korea Herald
02-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Korea Herald
[Interview] Smithsonian will continue to flourish: NMAA director Chase F. Robinson
Director says Smithsonian embodies American ideals of curiosity, research, engagement in recent interview amid US administration's crackdown on DEI When Chase F. Robinson, director of Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art, visited Seoul in 2022, he expressed his hope to bring the donated works by the late Samsung Chair Lee Kun-hee to the US. Fast-forward to 2025, the exhibition, the first-ever overseas exhibition of Lee's donated work as a collection, will finally arrive at the musueum in Washington. Titled "Korean Treasures: Collected, Cherished, Shared," the exhibition will run from Nov. 8 to Feb. 1, before traveling to Chicago and London. 'The scale of his collecting in the quality and comprehensiveness is really impressive. This juxtaposition of traditional and modern art will be really interesting to people,' the director said during an interview with The Korea Herald on May 23. Among the works to be exhibited in the US will include a dozen works of art designated as Treasures and National Treasures by the Korean government, which Robinson mentioned as the highlight of the exhibition. Lee's collection of some 23,000 pieces, majorly donated to the National Museum of Art and National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea in 2020, spans from artifacts to modern and contemporary art. 'Korean art does not have the visibility in the United States, because it is a relatively new field compared to Japanese and Chinese art,' the director said. "But it has started to change." The museum recently acquired two Korean works of art, donated to the museum, at the end of last year: a Buddhist sculpture from the 18th century and a folding screen named 'The Happy Life of Guo Ziyi (Gwak Bunyang Haengnak-do),' also likely painted in the late 18th century by a court artist. The director, who was appointed to head the museum in 2018, said the museum has grown extensively in the past five years in terms of its staff and budget, and fundraising has improved considerably — some of which has come from international engagement. 'It is a time of a lot of political and cultural change,' he said when asked about the US President Donald Trump's administration cracking down on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. 'The Smithsonian was opened in 1846 and NMAA opened in 1923. I am really confident that we are going to continue to flourish.' A few days after the interview, Trump said Friday that he had fired Kim Sajet, the director of the National Portrait Gallery, which is part of the Smithsonian Institute, calling her a 'strong supporter' of diversity, equity and inclusion in a social media post. In March, the US president issued an executive order on the Smithsonian, blaming that it has come under the 'influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology' and 'promoted narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive.' Robinson said there are many other parties and delegation — not just the government — involved to run the Smithsonian Institute. 'The Smithsonian, as you may know, has a unique status — we were set up as a trust — so we are governed separately from the US government. So the board of regents is the governing body, and it is a combination of private citizens and government officials. "The vice president is on the board of regents, and the chief justice of the Supreme Court is on the board of the regents, and there are congressmen. On the other hand there are lots of citizens and private citizens," he said. Robinson said the museum has a responsibility to serve American public because much of its funding comes from the government, which is why the museum tries to represent 'all the extraordinary kind of diversity' in art in their exhibitions and programming. 'We try to embody the best American ideals of curiosity, research, openness, respect and engagement,' he said. yunapark@
South China Morning Post
26-05-2025
- General
- South China Morning Post
Heritage items belong in their home country
If books are a window to the past, the recent return to China of a pair of silk manuscripts lifted a curtain that fell 79 years ago when they were illegally taken from the country before they ended up in a US museum. Their return is a powerful reflection of how cultural exchange offers hope at a low point in China-US relations. The two volumes of 2,300-year-old silk books – the earliest known in China – arrived in Beijing from the United States on May 18. The Zidanku Silk Manuscripts are the oldest ancient classics ever found, dating back to about 300BC. Volumes II and III of the three-volume set were transferred from the National Museum of Asian Art, part of the Smithsonian Institution in the United States. Volume I is privately owned, and efforts were reportedly also under way for its return to China. Illegally excavated in 1942 from a tomb in Zidanku in central China, the books were first acquired by a Chinese collector. They were taken from the country in 1946 by US collector John Hadley Cox. The museum received the silk manuscript fragments as a gift in 1992. Diplomatic efforts to get them returned were started by the National Cultural Heritage Administration of China decades later.
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Business Standard
19-05-2025
- General
- Business Standard
2,300-yr-old silk manuscripts finally return to China after 79 years in US
Two volumes of the 2,300-year-old Zidanku Silk Manuscripts arrived in Beijing from the United States in the early hours of Sunday, marking the end of a 79-year journey abroad, reported The South China Morning Post. Volumes II and III of the ancient silk texts, which date back to around 300 BC during China's Warring States Period, were returned by the National Museum of Asian Art, part of the Smithsonian Institution. They are considered the oldest known silk books discovered in China and are over a century older than the Dead Sea Scrolls. The manuscripts were unearthed in 1942 from a tomb in Zidanku, Changsha, in central China. They were first acquired by a Chinese collector and later smuggled out of the country in 1946 by American collector John Hadley Cox. The fragments were gifted to the Smithsonian in 1992. Volume I of the three-volume set remains with the privately held Arthur M Sackler Foundation. Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported that efforts are ongoing to facilitate its return. China's ambassador to the US, Xie Feng, said the manuscripts' return represents a significant moment in China-US cultural cooperation. 'The return of the Zidanku manuscripts reflects a national revival, as lost treasures of Chinese civilisation make their way home,' he said. Cultural relics reflect the splendor of civilization, preserve the legacy of history, and uphold the spirit of the nation. Each artifact carries the spirit and lineage of a nation, touching the hearts of all Chinese people. I'm so delighted to witness the return of the Zidanku… — Xie Feng 谢锋 (@AmbXieFeng) May 17, 2025 According to Xie, around 600 artefacts have been returned to China from the US, including more than 40 this year. Experts believe the silk manuscripts contain ritual or divinatory texts, possibly linked to mythical figures such as Fuxi and Nuwa. They are seen as key sources for the study of early Chinese religion, cosmology, and intellectual history. Li Ling, professor in the Chinese department at Peking University, told CCTV that the Zidanku manuscripts are culturally comparable to the Dead Sea Scrolls. 'They speak to our ancient knowledge systems, our understanding of the cosmos, and the details of everyday life,' he said. The two returned volumes will go on public display in July at the National Museum of China in Beijing.
