Thursday, October 18, 2007

At The Asian 3: New



The Asian Art Museum has such a deep permanent collection that the art is rotated in and out from god knows where with dizzying speed.



In the Monster Japanese Screens rooms on the second floor, the pieces are all "newly on view."



In the Japanese basket section, it's a brand new display from the huge collection...



...and the fabulous, bizarre designs mirror the fashion on the floor below.



Though the core of the permanent collection are antiquities from the Avery Brundage collection, the permanent collection has a large modern art quotient that seems to be growing all the time. Above is a piece by the Japanese artist Shinoda Toka...



...and in the Korean wing...



...there are a number of large paintings of the sacred mountains in North Korea by Park Dae-Sung.



One of the Philippines' greatest 20th century painters, Fernando Amorsolo, is represented by the 1955 piece above...



...and on the third floor, among the Hindi statues...



...there are a pair of wild paintings by the young Sikh artist Caur Sika.



For more info, click here for the museum's website.

3 comments:

Nancy Ewart said...

Gorgeous photos - I assume you took them yourself? Every time I've brought out my camera, there's a guard at my elbow glaring at me. Maybe I just took shiftier than you do!

Civic Center said...

Except for the nasty bald white guy security guard at the front door, most of the Asian Art security guards are pretty nice, unlike MOMA or the deYoung. You're not allowed to take photos on the first floor with the traveling exhibits, but in the permanent collection you can take photos of whatever you want as long as you don't use a flash. This means that the photos come out a bit dark, but that's what Photoshop is for!

As for the Sugimoto exhibit photos, they actually came from the museum itself, which was absolutely wonderful, although I do wish I could have taken a photo of the monster fossil at the beginning of the "History" show.

sfwillie said...

Hey Mike, Sometime I want to hear your evaluation of Brundidge's idea for an Asian Museum in SF.

My uninformed impression is that it was a good idea.

Great post.