Chinese Art Stolen from Cambridge Museum

BBC Radio reported that a group of 18 Chinese artifacts, mainly jades, were stolen from the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge on April 13, 2012. Professor and popular art crime author Noah Charney wrote a blog post about this. Not too surprising a development given the booming Chinese art market.

May 5 Presentation in Washington, DC

I will be a speaker on May 5 at 2 PM, the Freer Gallery (Smithsonian Institution) in a program entitled -- CONVERSATION: VISUAL CULTURE AND SOCIAL UPHEAVAL: IMAGING CHANGE IN LATE EDO PERIOD JAPAN. 

The program is held in conjunction with two special exhibitions at the Sackler Museum, which I highly recommend to anyone interested in Japanese painting and prints.  

Asia Society Forum on Collecting Ancient Art in the 21st Century

I recently attended a 2-hour forum at the Asia Society in NY in which a panel of experts including museum directors and curators, art dealers, academic specialists, collectors, and a former officer with the Department of Homeland Security discussed issues relating to the collecting and displaying of ancient Asian art. I found the discussions incredibly informative and have already found a summary of it and a video of the entire program posted to a website.

KOREAN ART SOCIETY

For readers of my blog interested in learning more about Korean art, I urge you to join the KOREAN ART SOCIETY, based in New York City.

S. J. Rozan Mystery Novel features intrigue about fictional Contemporary Chinese painter

As a fan of mystery novels in general and S. J. Rozan's Chinese-American detective Lydia Chin and her partner Bill Smith  in particular, I was delighted to read her newest novel, GHOST HERO, whose storyline featured mystery and intrigue surrounding a fictional contemporary Chinese painter. It is set in NY City, just before the start of "Asian Art Week," an annual event each March, which I generally attend. I thoroughly enjoyed it! On S.J. Rozan's website, I was pleased to see a page with links to numerous resources for the study and appreciation of Chinese art in general that she describes as the GHOST HERO COMPANION GUIDE.

Wall Street Journal Article on Chinese Art Market

The booming Chinese art market continues to make the news. See the recent Wall Street Journal article (Friday January 13, 2012), "Art's New Pecking Order."

New Publication on Later Japanese Buddhist Visual Culture

“The Visual Culture of Japanese Buddhism from the Early Modern Period to the Present,” Religious Compass 5/8 (2011): 389–411, 10.1111/j.1749-8171.2011.00294x.  This is an online journal available by subscription, that publishes summaries of recent research with extensive bibliographies of the topic, mainly sources in English.