Museum Exhibitions

Chen Zhen:
Inner Body Landscapes
Institute of Contemporary Art
Boston, Massachusetts
through December 31
Installation works created by the artist during the last five years of his life. Among them, an enormous, viewer-interactive piece, Jue Chang (50 Strokes to Each) (1998), which consists of more than a hundred chairs and beds that have been stretched with animal skins to produce makeshift drums. Viewers are invited to play them using "drum sticks" made of police clubs, branches, wooden sticks, stones, and fragments of guns and ammunition. Zen Garden (2000), an alabaster and metal sculpture, explores the encounter and fusion of two visions of medicine—Chinese and Western—in relation to the human body. Chen, who emigrated from Shanghai to Paris in 1986, died of autoimmune hemolytic anemia in December 2000, at the age of forty-five.

Miracles and Mischief:
Noh and Kyogen Theater in Japan
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Los Angeles, California
through February 2, 2003
Over one hundred woven and embellished costumes, along with carved wooden masks, lacquered musical instruments, and painted screens and handscrolls, from Japan's Noh and Kyogen theater traditions. The objects, dating from the fourteenth through the twentieth centuries, many of which are designated Important Cultural Properties by the Japanese government, have been gathered from important museum, shrine, temple, theater, and daimyo family collections in Japan and are exhibited alongside pieces from American collections.

Munakata Shiko:
Japanese Master of the Modern Print
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Los Angeles, California
December 5, 2002 - March 2, 2003
The first comprehensive retrospective devoted to Munakata Shiko (1903-75), one of Japan's greatest twentieth-century printmakers and the first Japanese artist to gain international recognition in the postwar period, travels to Los Angeles after its opening in Philadelphia; paintings, prints, calligraphy, and ceramics from throughout the artist's prolific career. (After its presentation in Los Angeles, the exhibition will travel extensively in Japan.)

Beneath the Banyan Tree:
Ritual, Remembrance, and Storytelling in Performed North Indian Folk Arts
Lowe Art Gallery
Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York
through January 6, 2003
Colorful examples of the four major forms of folk art that capture the intersection of ritual, performance, and art in the living traditions of North India: terra cotta and brass sculptures that represent the deities and serve as offerings to them; pata, storytelling scrolls used by performers in West Bengal; women's paintings from the Mithala region of Bihar that tell the stories of the gods and goddesses and create auspiciousness for life-cycle rituals; and Rajasthani par, large scrolls used by singers to tell epic stories in the western state of Rajasthan.

Cultivated Landscapes:
Reflections of Nature in Chinese Painting with Selections from the Collection of Marie-Hélène and Guy Weill
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
New York, New York
through February 9, 2003
Chinese landscape paintings and garden scenes, dating from the Five Dynasties period (907-960) to the late twentieth century, from the museum's permanent collection. Included in the exhibition are a dozen works from the Weill Collection that have either been given or are promised to the museum.

The Written Image:
Japanese Calligraphy and Painting from the Sylvan Barnet and William Burto Collection
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
New York, New York
through March 2, 2003
Sixty works assembled by two American collectors over the past forty years—including Buddhist holy texts, Zen aphorisms, secular poems, and intimate personal letters—trace the evolution of Japanese calligraphy form the Nara (710-784) through the Edo (1615-1868) periods.

Visions of Enlightenment:
Understanding the Art of Buddhism
Pacific Asia Museum
Pasadena, California
through January 12, 2003
An exhibition of paintings, sculptures, and ritual objects from India, Afghanistan, Nepal, Tibet, China, Korea, Japan, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Burma—primarily from the museum's own collection—that explores the basic imagery and symbolism of Buddhism.

Masterworks of Chinese Painting:
In Pursuit of Mists and Clouds
The University of Michigan Museum of Art
Ann Arbor, Michigan
through January 5, 2003
An overview of Chinese painting from the twelfth to twentieth centuries. The works on view were assembled during the past half-century by Dr. James Cahill—a preeminent scholar of Chinese art and a professor emeritus of History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley—and members of his family. The emphasis is on landscape paintings of the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) periods.

Japanese Visions of China
The University of Michigan Museum of Art
Ann Arbor, Michigan
through January 26, 2003
Japanese painting and calligraphy executed in self-consciously Chinese style, dating from the latter half of the eighteenth century and the nineteenth century, when Chinese culture held tremendous attraction for many Japanese intellectuals. The ban on overseas travel in effect at the time did not prevent Japanese poets, physicians, and entrepreneurs from eagerly importing Chinese books, writing poetry in Chinese, and taking up painting in the Chinese literati style. The exhibition explores questions about what China meant, and to whom, in early modern Japan.

Biennial and Triennial Exhibitions

APT 2002
(Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art 2002)
Queensland Art Gallery
Brisbane, Australia
through January 27, 2003
Works from the 1960s to the present, by sixteen artists and a performance collective from Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific Islands, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand. Artists include Nalini Malani, Nam June Paik, U-fan Lee, and Yayoi Kusama.

First Guangzhou Triennial
Guangdong Museum of Art
Guangzhou, China
November 18, 2002 - January 19, 2003
Entitled "Reinterpretation: A Decade of Experimental Chinese Art 1990-2000" and curated by Wu Hong, Feng Boyi, and Huang Zhuan. A comprehensive survey of experimental art and film by more than 130 contemporary Chinese artists.

Fourth Shanghai Biennale
Shanghai Art Museum
Shanghai, China
November 22, 2002 - January 20, 2003
Art and architecture is the theme of the show, which is called "Dushi Yingzao" (Urban Management and Construction). Head curator of the foreign section is Alanna Heiss, executive director of P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in New York; and of the domestic section, Fan Dian, vice director of Beijing's Central Academy of Fine Arts.

2002 Taipei Biennial
Taipei Fine Arts Museum
Taipei, Taiwan
November 29, 2002 - March 2, 2003
The third Taipei biennial, cocurated by Bartumeu Mari of Spain (former director of the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam) and Chia Chi Jason Wang of Taiwan (curator at the Museum of Contemporary Arts in Taipei), takes its name—Great Theatre of the World—from a play by Pedro Calderon de la Barca (1600-1681). The focus is "on the intense experience of art using the senses of the eye and the ear." Chen Chieh-jen, Kao Chung-li, Lee Tzu-hsun, and Yuan Guang-ming are the participating artists from Taiwan.