Our hearts go out to the people of Japan

As the world watches in horror at the unfolding catastrophe in Japan, many of us in the arts ask ourselves, how can we think/talk/work about or on art during such as time as this? We can’t. And yet, our doors are open, we have visitors coming in, and we must deliver.

I emailed all of our docents and storytellers today with some suggestions as to how they might be prepared for questions about Japan’s disaster in their interactions with visitors. I suggested that, when appropriate, they incorporate into their tours information about the recent earthquake and tsunami and Japan’s unique geography, which has been shaped by geothermal thrusts and volcanoes over many millennium. Japan, being an archipelago, has a culture inextricably intertwined with the sea. The Japanese are among the world’s greatest (and most voracious) fisher-folk. They have a tradition of landscape art in which nature is refined to its most idealized expression, and a religion focused on nature spirits–Shinto. Think of the meisho-e, or pictures of famous places, and of images of plum trees or streams abstracted into patterns of gold and line. And yet, behind the beauty of Japanese art is the reality of a cruel, impersonal natural world. Today thousands suffer and have perished in a natural disaster in Japan from which it will take many years to recover.

Mount Fuji and the beach at Miho no Matsubara

I advised our docents and storytellers to show our visitors the impacted areas using the maps in the galleries. Some helpful information about the earthquake and tsunami may be found on the BBC news site:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12722187

BBC also have an animated guide about how tsunamis happen
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7533972.stm

For those who wish to find out how to help, NPR has a full listing of agencies working in Japan:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/03/14/134532391/crisis-in-japan-heres-how-to-help

Japan Society has created a disaster relief fund to aid victims of the earthquake. More details can be found at this link: http://www.japansociety.org/news

This is the link to the Red Cross’ Japan Tsunami relief:
http://www.redcross.org/

We hope for the end to the suffering of our friends in Japan.

Chinese Language Teachers Conference in San Francisco

The museum is proud to host the participants in the 2011 National Chinese Language Conference organized by the Asia Society Partnership for Global Learning and the College Board in collaboration with the SF-based Mandarin Institute. The conference takes place April 14-16, 2011 at the Hilton, and our event is the evening of April 15.

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Naughty and/or Nice

Something I’ve noticed about the Zhang Huan sculpture in Civic Center: it serves as an excellent meeting place.  If you tell your friends to wait for you in Civic Center, they’ll often be found fifteen minutes later, standing in U.N. Plaza.  If you tell them to meet you next to the massive, multi-armed statue, there’s little room for error.
In case you weren’t in the neighborhood last Saturday, the sculpture in the plaza was the meeting place for several hundred participants of Santarchy (aka Santacon).  My thanks to everyone for making my Saturday, it never quite feels like the holidays until I see this thoroughly San Francisco phenomenon.

But make no mistake, although the event originated here, we don’t keep the fun for ourselves.  Tokyo, Beijing, Singapore, Okinawa, Seoul–even Manama, Bahrain–all host their very own versions of Santarchy.  Hopefully no one got run over by any reindeer or naughty elves last Saturday.  Did anyone spot the Santas in the Museum on Saturday?

sacred art for show?

Bull vessel for cremation

Before the museum blog started I created the Bali Art Blog to post about my trip to Bali and progress on our Bali exhibition. I was reviewing some of the comments there and thought this one would be of interest to the readers of the museum’s blog about the question of whether the museum should commission funerary arts as props for our exhibition. Gus Dark wrote:

please stop playing the sacred art with contemporary art which will causing Young generation in Bali or other place will misunderstanding or misinterpreter it, until the art itself losing it meaning, losing it sacred and “magical feeling” or we Balinese call it “TAKSU”. Feel free to search and create something new based on Balinese art but please don’t put the sacred art into modern or street art things, these arts have their own place… and we all have to respect it. thank you for your concerning about bali, I love Bali and Bali will always loves you..

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Bali videos

Work on the videos for the Bali exhibition are in full court press at the moment. I have been working with video editors Michael Rohde (SF based) to develop six videos to play in the gallery spaces and short clips for the handheld media tour,  and Martin Percy (London based) to create an interactive video kiosk. Why are we going so heavy on video with this exhibition? The key reason is our desire to convey in an immersive way the integration of art, ritual, and performance in Bali. Today we trekked out to Richmond to interview local dancer Kompiang Metri Davies. We asked her to wear her traditional Balinese temple best for the camera, but when the interview was done she had changed back into her regular around-the-house outfit of Indian looking tunic and slacks. Kompiang told us about her memories growing up in Ngis, a remote village in eastern Bali, how she came to learn dance (despite her parents’ resistance), symbolism of the various pieces of Balinese dance costume, how the mask dances frightened her as a child, dancers entering trance state, the simple bull-shaped coffins made in her village for cremation, and about making daily offerings. You may hear excerpts of her interview in the audio tour and on the introductory video. She will perform purification dances on opening day Feb. 25 and a mother-daughter dance work on Mother’s Day family festival on May 8, 2011.

Baseball, Japan, San Francisco: A Short & Biased History

Willie Mays & Joe DiMaggio at the Asian Art Museum in Golden Gate Park

Every morning on my way to work, I cast a glance at City Hall to remind myself that I’m not dreaming.  The Giants flags still fly, the banners proclaiming victory remain, and the Lone Star flag that once flew above Civic Center Plaza has yet to be replaced, an irresistible target for fans.
The air has been a little sweeter, the populace friendlier.  Upon the heels of history, reminiscing is in order.

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Babble On . . .

Art-Bab-ble [ahrt-bab-uhl]
noun; verb (used without object) -bled, -bling

1. free flowing conversation, about art, for anyone.
2. a place where everyone is invited to join an open, ongoing discussion – no art degree required.

The Asian Art Museum has now joined the ranks of institutions such as the Guggenheim, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the New York Public Library on ArtBabble.

What is ArtBabble? And how is it relevant to teachers? (You may ask.) Well, ArtBabble was conceived and initiated by the Indianapolis Museum of Art in order to showcase video art content in high quality format from a variety of sources and perspectives. ArtBabble is not blocked by school districts (as is YouTube), and has a great Notes feature, which allows you to delve deeper into video content via related educator resource packets, websites, works of art in museums’ collections, and much more.

Check out our latest video, What does the Asian Art Museum Mean to You? Babble on! www.artbabble.org

The Other Shanghai: a sea voyage the hard way

“The year 1871 was not particularly important in the development of Shanghai as a physical place, but was noteworthy when it comes to historiography…the Oxford English Dictionary singles it out as the year during which “to shanghai” began to appear in newspapers.”

Jeffrey Wasserstrom,

Global Shanghai, 1850-2010: A History in Fragments

Currently enthralled with all manner of 19th Century appurtenances, San Francisco is home to a second golden age of handlebar mustaches and historic cocktails served in period-specific bars.  Luckily for 21st century patrons, the fascination is all surface: absent are the trapdoors and opium-laced cocktails that made the city’s storied drinking holes famous for shanghaiing.  Precious little romance was involved in the process, as quite a number of men died while being taken, and unseasoned civilians were just as likely to fall to a drugged drink or truncheon.  Once aboard, a man dared not tell how he came to be there–his hope lay in being able to jump ship or find his fortune at the end of the line in Shanghai.

Also called “crimping,” the system was essential to early San Francisco’s maritime trade for the simple reason that more money could be made from the land than from the sea.  A sailor shipping out of San Francisco could earn many times more than at any other port of call, yet very few chose seagoing toil when a potential fortune was to be found on land.  The shortfall was made up the hard way.

The practice was hardly unusual or mysterious–the British impressed enough American sailors into their navy so as to cause ill feelings between the two countries.  But in its inimitable way, San Francisco found a way to put its own mark on this ignominious history.

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Celebrate India

By Saturday, August 28th, the city’s sweltering summer heat will yield to a more accustomed winter chill, so we recommend warming up with the Asian Art Museum’s Celebration of India.

Get moving with the Chitresh Das Dance Company, flex your mind and body with yoga gallery tours, sample Indian desserts and spices, and create your own works of art.

And since no fewer than five people have asked about it today, yes, Sanjay Patel will be presenting his new book, Ramayana: Divine Loophole.  Check out his Gheehappy.com, or learn about his influences (he has excellent taste) and read an interview on Pixar’s site.

A huge new shipment of South Asian books just arrived in the Museum Store, so if the docents pique your curiosity, you can take some of the museum home with you.  Namaste!

Meanwhile…

If you didn’t get enough qipao in the Shanghai exhibition (it is a broad survey, after all), I recommend you see what Softfilm was up to at the Hong Kong Museum of History.  Nearly 300 examples of the classic dress are on view and not one that can be tried on–talk about heaven and hell.
Many thanks to Dave for the great photos!