Displaying items by tag: Asian Art

Maxwell K. Hearn remembers when he first arrived at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1971. “There were only two spaces for Asian art: the Great Hall Balcony, which housed Chinese ceramics, and an adjacent gallery of Chinese Buddhist art,” he recalled. “Douglas Dillon, then chairman, and Thomas Hoving, the director, surveyed the museum and realized that Asian art was the weakest department. They also recognized that it was too important an area to neglect.”

Since then the number of galleries devoted to Asian art has grown to over 50, and the Met now has one of the world’s greatest collections.

The Smithsonian’s museums of Asian art in Washington, DC, are due to release their entire collections online on January 1, 2015. More than 40,000 works, from ancient Chinese jades to 13th-century Syrian metalwork and 19th-century Korans, will be accessible through high-resolution images without copyright restrictions for non-commercial use. The vast majority—nearly 35,000 objects—have never been seen by the public.

The Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery are the first Smithsonian museums and the only Asian art museums to complete the labor-intensive process of digitizing and releasing their entire collections online.

Chinese billionaire Liu Yiqian purchased a Tibetan tapestry for HK$348 million ($45 million) at a Christie’s auction in Hong Kong today, breaking the record for the most expensive Chinese work of art he set in April.

Liu, who bought a HK$214 million Chengua-era ceramic cup -- nicknamed the Chicken Cup for its imperial allegorical depiction using poultry -- and then paid for it with his Centurion credit card at Sotheby’s, plans to show both works in his private Shanghai museum.

Visitors to The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s presentation of four special exhibitions during the spring/summer 2014 season—"Lost Kingdoms: Hindu-Buddhist Sculpture of Early Southeast Asia, 5th to 8th Century;" "The Roof Garden Commission: Dan Graham with Günther Vogt;" "Charles James: Beyond Fashion;" and "Garry Winogrand"—generated an estimated $753 million in spending in New York, according to a visitor survey released by the Museum today. Using the industry standard for calculating tax revenue impact, the study found that the direct tax benefit to the City and State from out-of-town visitors to the Museum totaled some $75.3 million. (Study findings below.) 53% of the out-of-town exhibition visitors reported that visiting the Met was a key motivating factor in their decision to visit New York.

Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of the Metropolitan Museum, noted: “As this annual survey continues to indicate, the Met’s stellar range of exhibitions, as well as its renowned collection, are recognized world-wide for their excellence, and continue to draw domestic and international visitors to New York in large numbers. This visitorship plays a vital role in the City’s cultural tourism, which is a powerful contributor to the economic well-being of New York.”

Christie’s announced it has been entrusted with the sale of the Collection of Robert Hatfield Ellsworth, the distinguished American scholar, dealer and collector of Asian Art who passed away in August 2014. Widely recognized throughout Asia and the Americas for his ground-breaking role in the study and appreciation of Asian Art, Mr. Ellsworth was a distinguished connoisseur who opened new arenas of collecting to Western audiences and built a successful business purveying the very finest works of art to his generation’s foremost collectors. His personal collection of over 2,000 items was assembled over a lifetime and widely recognized as the most important grouping of Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Himalayan and Southeast Asian sculpture, paintings, furniture and works of art. To celebrate this exceptional collection and the generous and benevolent man behind it, Christie's is organizing free public exhibitions and a special five-day series of auctions and online-only sales to be held during Asian Art Week at Christie's New York in March 2015. A global tour of highlights from the collection kicks off November 21 in Hong Kong, and will continue to stops throughout Asia and Europe prior to the New York sales.

The collection of Edith and C.C. Johnson Spink has given the St. Louis Art Museum 225 works valued at no less than $50 million, including two paintings by Norman Rockwell, two each by Andrew and Jamie Wyeth, and more than 200 works of Asian art.

The Rockwells and Wyeths are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. But it is the Asian pottery, ceramics, bronzes, glass and jade, some thousands of years old, that will make the largest impact on the museum’s collection, officials said Tuesday.

Alexi Fung is the new managing director of the Bonhams Hong Kong branch, a post he will take up immediately at the auction house’s new One Pacific Place salesroom. With a focus on Asian 20th century & contemporary art, Fung has previously worked at auction houses in Hong Kong and Japan.

“We are delighted to welcome Alexi to Bonhams, particularly at this exciting time for the company,” Malcolm Barber, co-chairman for Bonhams Group, said in a statement.

It has evolved into one of New York’s longest-running fights over an estate.

For more than a decade, the family of C. C. Wang, a collector whose name graces a gallery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has been battling over a trove of classical Chinese paintings and scrolls that has been described as among the finest in the world.

Now, the feud has escalated. In the past month, two of Mr. Wang’s children, who have been fighting in Surrogate’s Court in Manhattan since his death in 2003 at 96, filed lawsuits in state and federal courts accusing each other of looting and deceit.

A monumental Fencai Imperial Qing Dynasty vase auctioned for $24.7 million at Skinner last night, setting a record as the top grossing lot ever sold in New England, and topping all sales of Qing Dynasty vases in the U.S. The Skinner "Asian Works of Art" auction coincides with Asia Week, and this vase has surpassed all other objects sold during the event to date.

An intensely focused and enthusiastic crowd packed the auction room, and most rose to their feet as the vase soared past the $10 million mark. After spirited bidding from multiple bidders present in the room and participating by phone, the hammer fell to a round of applause.