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San Francisco's Asian Art Museum
May 12, 2006
The Asian Art Museum in San Francisco on the US West Coast is one of
the city's better known cultural landmarks and ranked as the premier American collection of Asian art in its most holistic sense. The Museum opened in 1966 as a gift to the City of San Francisco by industrialist Avery Brundage of Olympic fame and its vast collection of 15,000 objects spanning almost six millennia are exclusively devoted to Asian art.
The museum was initially located at the city's Golden Gate Park for 35 years and reopened at its new expanded facility at San Francisco's Civic Center on March 20, 2003. The focus on Asian art is attributed to Mr Brundage's visit to London after the 1936 Olympics in Berlin when the young industrialist was exposed to the visual arts from the Orient. The Royal Academy was then showing an exhibition of Chinese art and the 2,000 plus objects clearly overwhelmed the American visitor who then embarked upon a voyage of discovering and
collecting Chinese and Japanese art with what has been described as "ferocious passion".
Over the next few decades, the Brundage private collection housed in Chicago grew larger and larger moving from the art of East Asia to encompass South East Asian and Indian art and finally it was decided to locate this at a permanent public site in San Francisco. The galleries in the museum have on display more than 2,500 objects from the permanent collection and are thematically divided into three broad sections. The first is the focus on the development of Buddhism which has pervaded most of Asia; the second is the trajectory of trade and cultural exchanges through the ages and finally an illumination of local beliefs and socio-religious practices that give different parts of Asia its distinctive aesthetic flavor.
It is in keeping with the last theme that the Asian Art Museum is now showing the work of well-known contemporary Indian artist Anjolie Ela Menon from May 9 for a six month period. This is the first time that an Indian artist is being so represented at the Asian Art Museum and this is testimony to the international recognition now being accorded to contemporary Indian art. Menon , a versatile artist had her first solo show in Delhi in the early 1960's and is better known for her figurative work which includes pensive nudes, brooding landscapes and haunting portraits – all tinged with a touch of Byzantine.
More recently the artist has moved to multi-media from her traditional paint on masonite board and the current focus is on the 'kavadiyas' – a Sanskrit word used to identify and symbolize an age old practice in India. This refers to male pilgrims from different parts of India walking barefoot for hundreds of miles towards the river Ganges, or Ganga in local idiom. This river is revered as the holiest and purest of Indian rivers – and the pilgrims make this annual trek to collect this water in brass vessels and bring them back to their homes. These vessels are slung on a bamboo pole and carried on the shoulder – this contraption is referred to as a 'kavadi' – and hence the carrier is the 'kavadiya' – and then the long return journey begins.
During the holy months, the northern plains of India are dotted with thousands of groups of colorfully attired 'kavadiyas' who converge on the Ganga and then return home with this holy water which is used for a host of rituals that denote the purification process. Menon has been able to capture the essence of this socio-religious practice in her triptych entitled 'yatra' – which means pilgrimage and this work has been acquired by the Asian Art Museum. The 6 month long visual display also includes a short video film where modern audio-visual technology appropriately embellishes the rhythms of ancient India.
The Asian Art Museum presents 8-10 special exhibitions annually and
many are considered major. Some of the most important exhibitions the museum has organized and presented since 2001 include: "Traditions Unbound:
Groundbreaking Painters of 18th Century Kyoto"; "The Kingdom of Siam: The Art of Central Thailand, 1350-1800" ; and "Goryeo Dynasty: Korea's Age of Enlightenment, 918-1392" . In the spring of 2007, the museum will organize and present an exhibition exploring the art of Mewar – a distinctive Indian school of painting.
The Asian Art Museum which began with the generous gift from Avery Brundage is now attracting fiscal support from Asians also. The single largest private gift, of US $15 million, came from Korean-born Silicon Valley entrepreneur Chong-Moon Lee. In recognition of Mr Lee's contribution, the new building is officially recognized as the Asian Art Museum—Chong-Moon Lee Center for Asian Art and Culture.
Asians are clearly making their mark on the global art scene in a
modest but definitive manner.
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