Celebrating Asian Art

September 10, 2023–January 7, 2024

This is the first exhibition in the West focusing on the artistic production and cultural impact of a region located in the coastal area south of the Yangzi River. Called Jiangnan, this region has throughout large parts of its history been one of the wealthiest, most populous, and fertile lands. For millennia, it has been an area of rich agriculture, extensive trade, and influential artistic production. Art from Jiangnan—home to such great cities as Hangzhou, Suzhou, and Nanjing, as well as to hilly picturesque landscapes stretched along rivers and lakes—has defined the image of traditional China for the world.

The exhibition features more than 200 objects from Neolithic times to the 18th century, ranging from jade, silk, prints, and paintings to porcelain, lacquer, and bamboo carvings. Jiangnan’s lush, green scenery inspired artists to conceive it as heaven on earth. Treasures from the Lower Yangzi Delta explores how this region gained a leading role in China’s artistic production and how it succeeded in setting cultural standards. This international exhibition presents works of art from private and public collections and museums in the United States, Europe, China, and Japan. 

Learn more and reserve timed tickets here.

March 10–September 17, 2023

Experience the story of India’s epic Ramayana through scenes interpreted by 20 artists. The paintings, in many styles, reveal the potent place of the Ramayana in the context of courtly connoisseurship and diplomacy, devotional pilgrimage sites, merchant-class entertainment, and a journey of self-discovery.

April 28–October 22, 2023

This display explores Korean modern and contemporary artists’ philosophies and attitudes toward materiality, process, and methods to express Korea’s complex history during those periods. Discussed are issues of gender, oppression, and inequity and South Korea’s postwar dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s.

May 12–November 5, 2023

When Salt Was Gold presents paintings by 18^th-century artists from Yangzhou that reflect the taste of the new merchant class who dominated the cultural life of the city that paved the way to modernity.

April 23, 2023–February 4, 2024

Raja Deen Dayal, the first great Indian photographer, depicted the British colonial elite and Indian maharajas in 1886–87. On display alongside Dayal’s photographs are historical Indian paintings, textiles, clothing, and jewelry from the museum’s collection. These objects provide viewers with insight into the cultural context and help translate the objects in the photographs from monochrome into color.

August 19, 2023–March 10, 2024

This exhibition showcases works in porcelain and stoneware made by the Kyoto-based studio of Seifū Yohei from the late 19th to the mid-20th century. These features works by members of the Seifū family reflect both the ceramics culture of Kyoto, an ancient city and former capital of Japan, as well as the artists’ engagement with Chinese forms and techniques as an alternative way to bring Japanese porcelain into the modern era at a time when Western cultures were leaving a major mark in Japan.