Asian Arts Council Calendar

Lectures and Study Group meet in Zoom!

1. Lectures, and More

2. Zoom lectures are FREE (for now)! Please encourage friends to join in on these excellent lectures!
   To register, find the date on the calendar of The San Diego Museum of Art. Click here! Once registered, an invitation email will be sent.

3. Thursday, Jun 24 - 1:00 p.m.

   Then & Now: A Hundred Years of Chinese Fine-art Photography - Details

   The history of photography in China is unlike anywhere else in the world. Since the introduction of the photographic medium to China in the late 1840s, Chinese photographers have adapted this foreign technology and grafted it onto more traditional Chinese forms of artistic expression. Ms. Beres will present an introduction to the history of Chinese photography, focusing on the innovations of the early Chinese photographers including Lang Jingshan 郎靜山, the godfather of fine art photography in China. Zooming in on the past thirty years of Chinese photography, Ms. Beres will then introduce the work of eight contemporary artists who were featured in a recent exhibition at the Museum of Photographic Arts (MOPA) in San Diego, curated by Ms. Beres. Together, these neo-traditionalist photographers explore the possibility of transformation of the Chinese aesthetic tradition within a postmodern context. Innovative and transformational, be prepared to see photography as you've never encountered it before! Image: Lang Jingshan, Riverside Spring (1934), Silver Gelatin Print, 43 × 35 cm

   Tiffany Wai-Ying Beres, Asian contemporary art specialist and art historian

4. Thursday, July 29, 2021 - 1:00 p.m.

   New Fragrances: The Huntington’s Expanded Chinese Garden Click for Details

   Liu Fang Yuan (the Garden of Flowing Fragrance)—located on the grounds of the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, CA—is arguably the finest Suzhou-style scholar’s garden outside of China. In the fall of 2020, the garden celebrated the opening of several new features, including a dramatic courtyard for the display of penjing (miniature trees similar to bonsai), intricate pavilions, and winding corridors. As the pandemic is gradually tamed, an art gallery and scholar’s studio will soon open to the public, as well. This lecture will introduce the garden’s new features and elucidate the insights that they provide into Chinese garden history.

   Phillip E. Bloom , June and Simon K.C. Li Curator of the Chinese Garden and director of the Center for East Asian Garden Studies at The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, CA