New Japanese Clay at the Asian

A small new exhibit opened at the Asian Art Museum today.

Ten years ago the museum trumpeted a future donation from a married pair of San Francisco psychiatrists, Dr. Phyllis A. Kempner and Dr. David D. Stein.

Though there is no word on the current status of the promised donation of their contemporary Japanese ceramics collection, this current selection is tantalizing.

In the 2015 press release, Kempner is quoted: "When we started [collecting], we were mostly drawn to traditional forms.”

“But we’ve become increasingly interested in the more sculptural area. We tend to like either very expressionistic work or quite minimal reductive pieces.”

A few of the pieces look like Frank Gehry buildings in clay.

The show demonstrates once again that Japanese design is in a class of its own.