Dragons, Samurai & Pharaohs
Lovers of ancient art, rejoice! There are some amazing and inspiring exhibits happening in San Francisco this spring and summer.
The first, “The Dragon’s Gift, The Sacred Arts of Bhutan,” currently showing at the Asian Art Museum, features the Buddhist art and sacred objects of Bhutan, the “Land of the Thunder Dragon.” The Asian Art Museum writes:
East of Mount Everest and bordered by India and Tibet, Bhutan is a remote and mystical kingdom, considered by many as “The Last Shangri-La.” A sovereign nation that has maintained its cultural, artistic, and religious traditions intact, it is one of the few countries in Asia never colonized by its neighbors or Western powers.
The first exhibition of its kind, The Dragon’s Gift provides an exceptionally rare opportunity to view some of the most sacred and beloved Buddhist arts in Bhutan.
Many of the 150 objects – intricate paintings, sculptures, textiles, and more – are still used in temple and monastery rituals and never have been accessible to a Western audience. All are on public view for the first time.
This show ends on May 10th.
Coming to the Asian Art Museum on June 12th will be the “Lords of the Samurai” exhibit. The Asian Art Museum describes the exhibit as follows:
The samurai culture and code of conduct, bushido, have long captivated the imaginations and aspirations of young and old in the Western world. More than just fierce warriors, Japanese samurai of the highest rank were also visionaries who strove to master artistic, cultural, and spiritual pursuits.
Lords of the Samurai takes an intimate look at the daimyo, or provincial lords of the warrior class in feudal Japan. The Hosokawa clan, powerful military nobles with a 600-year-old lineage, embodied this duality of fierce warrior and refined gentleman.
The exhibition features more than 160 works from the Hosokawa family collection housed in the Eisei-Bunko Museum in Tokyo, the Kumamoto Castle, and the Kumamoto Municipal Museum in Kyushu. Objects on view will include suits of armor, armaments (including swords and guns), formal attire, calligraphy, paintings, teaware, lacquerware, masks, and musical instruments.
And then, on June 27th, King Tutankhamun returns to the de Young Museum. The de Young writes about this exhibit:
More than 3,000 years after his reign, and 30 years after the original exhibition opened in San Francisco, Tutankhamun, ancient Egypt’s celebrated “boy king,” returns to the de Young Museum. In the summer of 2009 the de Young presents Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs, a glorious exhibition of over 130 outstanding works from the tomb of Tutankhamun, as well as those of his royal predecessors, his family, and court officials. On view from June 27, 2009, through March 28, 2010 at the de Young, Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs provides insight into the life of Tutankhamun and other royals of the 18th Dynasty (1555–1305 BC). All of the treasures in the exhibition are more than 3,000 years old. Tutankhamun was one of the last kings of Egypt’s 18th Dynasty and ruled during a crucial, turmoil-filled period of Egyptian history. The boy king died under mysterious circumstances at the age of 18 or 19, in the ninth year of his reign (1322 BC). Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings was filled with magnificent treasures meant to ensure his divine immortality. Many objects belonging to the young king—exquisite personal items used in his daily life—were placed in it. Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs offers glimpses of that critical period in Egyptian history. On display will be 50 of Tutankhamun’s burial objects, including one of the gold and precious stone inlaid canopic coffinettes that contained his mummified internal organs. Also included are many of the day-to-day objects enjoyed by the young king including a finely crafted child’s chair and an inlaid game board, one of four in the tomb, clearly representing an activity enjoyed by the king. New to the encore tour of the exhibition are two nested coffinettes that contained the remains of two fetuses that are now undergoing DNA testing to reveal their relationship to King Tut. Also new to the exhibition from Tutankhamun’s tomb is a beautiful scarab bracelet featuring a central image of a beetle representing the sun god. An elaborate pectoral, a masterpiece of jewelry making, contains a rare, yellow-green glass stone carved in the shape of a scarab beetle that some scientists believe to be a fragment of an ancient meteorite. More than 70 additional objects from tombs of 18th Dynasty royals, as well the possessions of elite individuals with close connections to the royal family also will be exhibited. These stone, faience and wooden pieces from burial sites before Tut’s reign will give visitors a sense of what the burials of both royalty and the elite may have been like and what the Egyptians of that time considered essential for the afterlife.
I’m very eager to visit all of these amazing exhibitions and to soak in inspiration from across the world and throughout the millennia.
If you want to stay current with the exhibits at the Asian Art Museum and at the de Young, I suggest following them on Twitter. Here’s a link to the Asian Art Museum’s feed, and here’s the de Young’s.
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[...] Shalom added an interesting post today on Dragons, Samurai & PharaohsHere’s a small reading Lovers of ancient art, rejoice! There are some amazing and inspiring exhibits happening in San Francisco this spring and summer. The first, “ The Dragon’s Gift, The Sacred Arts of Bhutan,” currently showing at the Asian Art Museum, features the Buddhist art and sacred objects of Bhutan, the “Land of … [...]