EASC Newsletter

Current Art Exhibits

Conspiring with Tradition: Contemporary Painting from the Guilin Chinese Painting Academy
The IU Art Museum’s Special Exhibitions Gallery is the exclusive museum venue for Conspiring with Tradition: Contemporary Painting from the Guilin Chinese Painting Academy. This special exhibition features sixty large-scale contemporary Chinese paintings by thirteen different artists, the majority of which have been painted in the last two years. It opened September 30 and will conclude December 17, 2006. A public lecture and opening reception for the exhibition took place on September 29, with eight of the thirteen artists in attendance to help celebrate their work.

The Guilin Academy artists show great diversity in their themes and techniques as well as in their life experiences—the oldest member of the academy is in his nineties, the youngest in his thirties. Some are highly acclaimed masters, others are rising new stars. Against long odds, these artists have held sacred the shared goal of giving life to a contemporary “Guilin School” of painting, reflecting their profound artist heritage.

The exhibition is made possible with support from IU’s New Frontiers in the Arts and Humanities Program, the IU Art Museum’s Arc Fund, and the Pamela Buell Endowed Fund for the Curator of Asian Art. It is curated by Judy Stubbs and co-curated by Herman Mast.

Japan-in-America Exhibition
Japan-In-America: The Turn of the Twentieth Century will be on display at the Mathers Museum through Friday, December 22. Sponsored by the Toshiba International Foundation, the Department of Communication and Culture, and EASC, the exhibit samples the vast number of images, stories, performances, and accounts of Japan that circulated in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. At no time has the interest in and significance of Japan for Americans been greater than between 1890 and 1913, a rich and complex historical period for both nations. This exhibit displays a wide array of images and artifacts from the popular culture of the period—paintings, poetry, and travel literature, but also postcards, illustrated books, sheet music, magic lantern slides, editorial cartoons, motion pictures, missionary tracts, children's literature, advertisements, circus acts, magic shows, and a range of other forms. For more information, see http://www.indiana.edu/~jia1915/ and http://www.indiana.edu/~mathers/exhibits/japan.html.