The Diaspora

Join us for an evening with Holland Cotter—a 2009 recipient of the Pulitzer Prize and the chief art critic of the New York Times—as he speaks with Vishakha Desai, President and CEO of Asia Society, and Jay Xu, Director of the Asian Art Museum, about his enthusiasm for and experience in developing critical writing about Asian contemporary art.

Michael Knight, Senior Curator of Chinese Art at the Asian Art Museum, and Jerry Yang, Collector and Co-founder of Yahoo!, discuss collecting Chinese calligraphy in conjunction with the exhibition, Out of Character: Decoding Chinese Calligraphy (on view at the Asian Art Museum from October 5, 2012–February 13, 2013).

Regarded as one of the fastest guitarist in Indonesia, I Wayan Balawan appears in a special concert performing his signature blend of traditional Balinese music with jazz. Well-known for his ability to play a double-neck guitar and his development of the touch-tapping technique, Balawan has released three albums and tours all over the world.

Asian Art Museum Art Speak teaching artist, Adrienne Skye Roberts, discusses the inspiration behind her work with the Art Speak interns and her own art.

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.

A time-lapse video of the installation of a vast 10 x 20 foot oil painting of the “Delhi Durbar of 1903” by Roderick McKenzie at the Asian Art Museum. Part of the special exhibition, Maharaja: The Splendor of India’s Royal Courts (on view at the Asian Art Museum from October 21, 2011–April 8, 2012).

The Wooden Fish Ensemble plays the music of Hyo-shin Na, including the world premiere of a new work based on A Meadow by Czeslaw Milosz for piano solo. Program includes commentary by Hyo-shin.

Artist Koki Tanaka discusses his works.

Asian Art Museum education staff, Kenneth Ikemoto, discusses his perspectives on home and identity at the museum’s Art Speak AsiaAlive program.

“If the Qur’an is indeed a divine message to all peoples, what does it mean to an individual American in the 21st century?”

This is the question that artist Sandow Birk contemplated during his extensive travels through the Islamic world, which ultimately led to his nine-year project to transcribe and illustrate the entire Qur’an. Birk will present his project, American Qur’an, which finds connections between the universality of the messages in the sacred text and contemporary American life.

Birk will be joined by Bay Area artist Ala Ebtekar; Qamar Adamjee, Malavalli Family Foundation Associate Curator of Art of the Indian Subcontinent; and Jeffrey Durham, Associate Curator of Himalayan Art, to discuss the roles art has played in religious and political contexts.