Highlights 

Shokoku-ji Jotenkaku Museum 40th Anniversary Exhibition, Legacy of Zen Temples: Shokoku-ji, Kinkaku-ji and Ginkaku-ji, Kyoto
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Shokoku-ji Jotenkaku Museum 40th Anniversary Exhibition, Legacy of Zen Temples: Shokoku-ji, Kinkaku-ji and Ginkaku-ji, Kyoto

Over the centuries, Zen Buddhism and its institutions have served as a catalyst for the creation and preservation of Japanese art. Zen monasteries have built up extraordinary collections of artworks and transmitted them from generation to generation. This is especially the case for one of the most prominent monasteries in Japanese history, Kyoto’s Shōkoku-ji.

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Staging the Supernatural: Ghosts and the Theatre in Japanese Prints
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Staging the Supernatural: Ghosts and the Theatre in Japanese Prints

The exhibition ‘Staging the Supernatural: Ghosts and the Theater in Japanese Prints’ is currently on view in Washington, DC, at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art (NMAA; 23 March–6 October 2024). The origin of the exhibition dates back more than fifteen years but was buoyed into reality by two major acquisitions.

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Village Abstraction: Patchwork Textiles in Rural China 
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Village Abstraction: Patchwork Textiles in Rural China 

The historical trail of these Chinese patchworked textiles winds back almost two thousand years, with the entrance of Buddhism to China, and back at least another five hundred years in India. The tradition carried with it not only the concept of stitching together fabric scraps but also layers of meanings attached to such assembling.

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Friendship, Network, and Self-Fashioning in Cao Zaikui’s Catalogue of Ancient Bronzes
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Friendship, Network, and Self-Fashioning in Cao Zaikui’s Catalogue of Ancient Bronzes

Antiquarianism (jinshixue) established itself as a respected academic discipline in the Song dynasty (960–1279) and gained significant prominence in the 19th century. Following the reign of the emperor Jiaqing (1796–1820), more scholars collected and published bronze and stone inscriptions to verify and supplement classical and historical records found in transmitted texts.

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The Abstract Prints of Hagiwara Hideo
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The Abstract Prints of Hagiwara Hideo

In 1954, the Japanese oil painter Hagiwara Hideo (1913–2007) turned to woodblock printmaking after falling ill with tuberculosis. Right from the start his prints were abstract in style, which made his reputation abroad as well as in Japan.

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Forging a Legacy: The Jambiya, Yemen’s Iconic Weapon
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Forging a Legacy: The Jambiya, Yemen’s Iconic Weapon

For many cultures and societies across the globe, arms and armour played an important role off the battlefield, particularly as markers of social status, military rank, courage, and wealth. In Yemen, this tradition continues to prevail with a dagger known as the jambiya or janbīyyah.

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