A Brief History of Samurai Armor
Learn about samurai armor by exploring artworks in the Asian Art Museum's collection.
Learn about samurai armor by exploring artworks in the Asian Art Museum's collection.
Andrea Horbinski of the UC Berkeley History–Social Science Project, gives a talk to teachers at the Japan Teacher Institute at the Asian Art Museum on Japanese history, folktales, anime, and more.
Warning: Contains explicit language. Join influential playwright Philip Kan Gotanda to get the inside scoop on the ideas and inspirations behind his groundbreaking body of work, including his play, After the War Blues.
Asian Art Museum Storyteller, Liz Nichols, tells a Japanese story about Amaterasu, the sun goddess, in the museum's Japan galleries.
Japanese artist Tanabe Chikuunsai IV pushes the boundaries of bamboo art. He dramatically breaks the scale that we expect of the medium with soaring, twisting forms that stretch from floor to ceiling. His dramatic, immersive environments evoke the bamboo forests where these works began their lives.
Professor Robert Sharf, University of California, Berkeley, discusses Japanese Buddhism at the Medieval Japan Teacher Institute at the Asian Art Museum.
Explore Nara's ancient Buddhist art and architecture.
Mari L'Esperance reads a poem she wrote in response to seven paintings by Fuyuko Matsui in the exhibition Phantoms of Asia: Contemporary Awakens the Past (on view at the Asian Art Museum from May 18–September 2, 2012). This presentation was part of MATCHA. Co-presented by Litquake.
In this lecture series, Mary-Ann Milford of Mills College and Lewis Lancaster of UC Berkeley discuss the arts of Japan.
Learn more about the arts of Korea and Japan through lectures by renowned scholars.
This lecture series, organized by the Society for Asian Art, explores narrative using Asian art—how myths, legends, histories and moral precepts have been transmitted through visual means. Topics range from sculptural reliefs and murals used to educate pilgrims at famous religious sites to works created primarily for entertainment. Contemporary storytelling is also addressed via lectures on Bollywood and manga produced by San Francisco's Henry Yoshitaka Kiama.
This lecture series examines the origins of traditions and how traditions are renewed, appropriated, and transformed over time.
Artist Ayomi Yoshida discusses her installation, Yedoensis . . .
In all lacquer objects, regardless of when they were produced, a resinous sap coating preserves the core material and allows for decoration. The material for lacquering is extracted from lacquer trees (Toxicodendron vernicifluum; formerly Rhus verniciflua), which is the same genus as poison oak. Learn more in this award winning documentary on Japanese lacquer.
In all lacquer objects, regardless of when they were produced, a resinous sap coating preserves the core material and allows for decoration. The material for lacquering is extracted from lacquer trees (Toxicodendron vernicifluum; formerly Rhus verniciflua), which is the same genus as poison oak. Learn more in this award winning documentary on Japanese lacquer.
Learn about Kofukuji temple and the hollow dry lacquer sculptures in the Asian Art Museum's Collection that were found there.
This video documents the Asian Art Museum's Nature in Art school program.
Thanks to the Society for Asian Art's renowned Arts of Asia lecture series, speakers from the Bay Area and across the country will transport you across Asia by land and by sea.
Asian Art Museum Storyteller, Leta Bushyhead, tells a new year story about Jizo, a deity whose statues are a common sight throughout Japan, especially by roadsides. Traditionally, he is seen as the guardian of children.
A step-by-step guide to creating circular plaits, used for the base of bamboo baskets with master bamboo artist Shosei Fujitsuka.
Laura Allen, Curator of Japanese Art at the Asian Art Museum discusses a monochrome woodblock print of a courtesan playing with a cat.
Scholars Melinda Takeuchi and Timon Screech discuss a woodblock print of courtesans in an unlicensed pleasure quarter during the Edo period (1615–1868) in Japan.
An excerpt from Sita’s Daughters, a dance piece choreographed and performed by acclaimed artist Mallika Sarabhai.
Renowned scholars discuss the impact of personalities and patronage on the arts of Asia.
Learn about samurai castles.
Fudo Myoo (the Immovable One) is one of the powerful deities known as the Five Bright Kings in Japanese Buddhism and folk religion. As a manifestation of the central cosmic Buddha Mahavairochana (Japanese: Dainichi), Fudo is believed to protect Buddhism and its true adherents. Like all Bright Kings, Fudo assumes a frightening form, with a sword in his right hand and a rope in his left. He sits in front of a swiring flame of fire, with which he purifies evil.
Japanese artist and pop icon Fuyuko Matsui explores the haunted, interconnected realms of traditional and modern aesthetics. As one of the few women to have attained top training and mastery of traditional Japanese painting (nihonga) techniques in Japan, Matsui also cites centuries-old artistic influences, such as the iconoclastic eighteenth-century painter Soga Shohhaku and the fifteenth-century painter Soga Jasoku.
In Noh theatre (classical Japanese music drama), Japanese ghosts are usually upset females. Portrayed without feet because they have lost their connection to the earth, they are so filled with love, jealousy or rage that they won't go peacefully into the night. Japanese believe ghosts are people who have died with an unpaid on — “debt” or “obligation.” If not repaid, the debt is passed down for generations, growing with each one like a snowball into an avalanche.
The Society for Asian Art's renowned Arts of Asia lecture series will focus on trade roads and sea routes. You will be transported from courts to caravans, from stupas to shipwrecks, from mountain passes and river valleys to open seas. Travel with merchants and monks, monarchs and missionaries and see their riches and relics. Discover ancient ceramics, sculptures, coins, calligraphy, tea wares, textiles and much more.
Watch Shiho Sasaki, Paintings Conservator at the Asian Art Museum, handle a Japanese hanging scroll for display and storage.
Overview of the Hokusai and Hiroshige: Great Japanese Prints from the James A. Michener Collection, Honolulu Academy of Arts exhibition that took place at the Asian Art Museum from September 26–December 6, 1998 (filmed at former museum location in Golden Gate Park).
Melinda Takeuchi, Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures and the Department of Art History at Stanford University, discusses the coded meanings behind a woodblock print in the Asian Art Museum's collection.
Artist Hiroshi Sugimoto recently expanded his work to include traditional Japanese performing arts such as bunraku, or puppet theater, through film. Most recently, Sugimoto lent his vision to the arrangement, direction, and stage design of an adaptation of famed bunraku play The Love Suicide at Sonezaki (Sonezaki Shinju), a 1703 work by Chikamatsu Monzaemon. The program begins with a screening of this monumental project, followed by a conversation between the artist and Phantoms of Asia (on view at the Asian Art Museum from May 18–September 2, 2012) guest curator Mami Kataoka.
Preparators at the Asian Art Museum install a 2100-pound bronze bell for the Bell Ringing Ceremony on December 31. In this annual tradition at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, visitors, led by a Buddhist priest, mark New Year by ringing a 2100-lb., sixteenth-century Japanese bronze bell originally from a temple in Tajima Province in Japan. Now part of the museum's collection, the bell will be struck 108 times with a large custom-hewn log. According to custom in several Buddhist cultures, this symbolically welcomes the New Year and curbs the 108 mortal desires (bonno) which, according to Buddhist belief, torment humankind.
Watch the installation of two monumental Japanese bronze lion sculptures on granite plinths outside the museum's front entrance on Larkin Street.
Asian Art Museum storyteller, Liz Nichols, tells a Japanese story about a boy who was only one inch tall in the museum's Japan galleries.
Dr. Andrea Horbinski of the UC Berkeley History-Social Science Project, discusses Japan and an interconnected world at the Medieval Japan Teacher Institute, held at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.
Dr. Andrea Horbinski, of the UC Berkeley History-Social Science Project, discusses Japan and its geography at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco as part of the Medieval Japan Teacher Institute.
Timed to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the arrival of the ship Kanrin Maru and the first Japanese embassy to the United States, this thematic exhibit focuses on some of the first Japanese diplomats and cultural emissaries in San Francisco, and how they responded to the experience of being in America. Watch a selection of talks by renowned scholars related to this exhibition.
Lewis Lancaster of UC Berkeley gives an overview of Japanese Buddhism.
Lewis Lancaster of UC Berkeley gives an overview of Japanese Buddhism.
The interdisciplinary performance features artists Tatsu Aoki, Kioko Aoki, Francis Wong, Megan Lee, Wesley Hitomo Yee and Melody Takata, as well as master artists Chizuru Kineya and Michikaoru Hanayagi.
Asian Art Museum Docent, Peter Sinton, gives a talk on his collection of Japanese gift covers. This talk was i
Nobu Kurashige, Head Professor and Managing Director, Ikenobo Ikebana Society of America, and Shiho Sasaki, Paintings Conservator at the Asian art Museum, create an art display in a tokonoma (display alcove) for Early Spring and Late Summer/Early Autumn.
Christoffer Bovbjerg, PhD Candidate at UC Berkeley, gives an overview of Japanese history using objects from the Asian Art Museum's collection at the Japan Teacher Institute at the Asian Art Museum in partnership with the University of California at Berkeley History–Social Science Project.
The annual Bell-Ringing Ceremony follows the Japanese custom in which the end-of-the-year bell (joya no kane) is struck 108 times before midnight on New Year's Eve, symbolically welcoming the New Year and curbing the 108 mortal desires (bonno), which according to Buddhist belief torment humankind.
See demonstrations of employing both traditional (no electric needles!) and modern techniques. Joining Horitaka's diverse, talented crew of tattooists are special guests from Japan -- Shige, a powerhouse tattoo artist who has been showcased all over the world; Mutsuo, who's designed for Bathing Ape and Hysteric Glamour; and Kazunobu Nagashima, a client of Shige who will proudly display his backpiece, which won a 2007 Milano Tattoo Convention award.
Hear Asian Art Museum Art Speak interns discuss the Japanese teahouse at the museum.
Asian Art Museum docent, Bob Oaks, discusses Joseph Heco, a Japanese castaway, in conjunction with the exhibition, Japan's Early Ambassadors to San Francisco, 1860–1927, (on view at the Asian Art Museum from May 4–November 21, 2010).
Sip, learn, and chat with Miwa Wang, sake sommelier and manager of True Sake, about the nuanced tastes and bouquets of sake. Stroll the galleries, see Lords of the Samurai, discover a Japanese tea ceremony showcasing matcha, a powdered green tea and namesake of our program. Observe its meticulous preparation and whisk your own. Dip into a talk on tea ceremony and warrior culture, join a docent conversation, or relax with a sake-tini, friends, and DJ-spun music.
Richard Hill and students demonstrate kendo, a Japanese martial arts form, at the Asian Art Museum's educator workshop for the Lords of the Samurai exhibition on September 5, 2009.
Artist Koki Tanaka discusses his works.
Performed on a simple stage Kyogen (literally “wild speech”) that first developed in the 1300s.
Yo Azama, 2012 National Language Teacher of the Year (Japanese Education) discusses language and learning during his keynote address at the Japanese Language Symposium held on February 18, 2012 at the Asian Art Museum. Presented by the Japan Society of Northern California, co-hosted by the Consulate General of Japan in San Francisco, the San Francisco Unified School District and the Asian Art Museum.
Join the 2015 Light Awards Project team on their journey of discovering new ideas and building networks for supporting Japanese programs in the Bay Area and beyond. This professional development is made possible by the generous support from Intrepid Philanthropy Foundation, LIGHT Awards, and the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. Held on March 5, 2016 at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.
A collaboration between calligrapher Kazuaki Tanahashi and musician Aenea Keyes. Part of the AsiaAlive: Writing as Art Series at the Asian Art Museum (December 14-16, 2012).
A collaboration between calligrapher Kazuaki Tanahashi and musician Aenea Keyes. Part of the AsiaAlive: Writing as Art Series at the Asian Art Museum (December 14-16, 2012).