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Asian art

Curator's Corner

National Great Outdoors Month: Art by Cheng Tsung Feng (born 1987 Taiwan)

Thursday, June 4, 2026 | Karl Cole

National Great Outdoors Month began as National Great Outdoors Week in 1998 in the US. In 2019 the US Senate created National Great Outdoors Month for June, to encourage people to enjoy the recreation ...

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Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday: Watanabe Kunio (born 1967 Japan)

Wednesday, June 3, 2026 | Karl Cole

Long before ceramic arts were recognized as fine art in the West, the art form was revered as a priceless national treasure in Japan. Contemporary artists like Kunio Watanabe continue to build on the ...

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Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday: Tsujimura Shirō (born 1947 Japan)

Friday, May 22, 2026 | Karl Cole

Like many of the Japanese artists born after World War II (1939-1945), the art of Shirō Tsujimura is a reverent combination of honoring ages-old Japanese artistic traditions, and adding contemporary a ...

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Curator's Corner

National Beverage Day

Wednesday, May 6, 2026 | Karl Cole

National Beverage Day began around 1921 or 1922, originally known as National Carbonated Beverage Day. The day encourages people to grab their favorite drink and relax with friends. But, beverages are ...

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Curator's Corner

National Picnic Day: Art by Mori Keiko (born 1939 Japan)

Thursday, April 23, 2026 | Karl Cole

Keiko Mori is a National Living Cultural Treasure in Japan. Her ceramics celebrate the centuries old traditions in ceramic arts. Although ceramic picnic baskets do not strictly speaking exist in the W ...

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Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday for 12 March: Anish Kapoor

Thursday, March 12, 2026 | Karl Cole

Although in the early 1980s Kapoor’s work was consciously absorbing aspects of Indian culture, in the late 1980s into the 1990s he began to formulate an abstract visual language that transcends ...

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Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday: Mori Mariko (born 1967 Japan)

Thursday, February 12, 2026 | Karl Cole

Mariko Mori is an internationally acclaimed artist whose practice explores universal questions at the intersection of life, death, reality, and technology. She is known for her photographs and videos ...

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Curator's Corner

Happy and Healthy New Year!

Monday, December 22, 2025 | Karl Cole

I cannot image a better way than saying “goodbye” to 2025 than with the uplifting, positive sentiments reserved for the pine tree in Japanese and Chinese cultures. There are very few e ...

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Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday: Kenneth Cobonpue

Tuesday, December 16, 2025 | Karl Cole

Kenneth Cobonpue is a contemporary designer of furniture and other household forms who is dedicated to the use of natural and recycled materials, the natural materials often coming from his native ...

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Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday: Sato Koichi

Wednesday, December 10, 2025

Sato’s poster work shows just how fully Japanese graphic designers have absorbed Western modernist aesthetics and combined them with traditional Japanese sensibilities. Japanese poster art d ...

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Curator's Corner

The Week of Shichi-go-san: Kitagawa Utamaro

Monday, November 10, 2025 | Karl Cole

“Rites of passage” refer to cultures all over the world in which certain birthdays are celebrated as stepping stones to a new period of life. A Japanese example is Shichi-go-san. The n ...

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Curator's Corner

A Fall Landscape: Lan Ying

Monday, October 27, 2025 | Karl Cole

This past weekend we laid to rest my dear father-in-law. He was always a big fan of the color changes to the trees in the fall in New England, which is peaking right about now. I am dedicating this we ...

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Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday: Sekino Junichirō

Thursday, October 23, 2025 | Karl Cole

Sekino Junichirō was a woodblock printmaker in the sōsaku hanga movement, in which the artists draws the subject, cuts the woodblock, and prints the image themselves. These artists often incorpora ...

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Curator's Corner

National Apple Day: Art by Yokoi Tomoe

Tuesday, October 21, 2025 | Karl Cole

There are about 7000 varieties of apple in the world. Apples have been a favorite element of still life since still life became an accepted stand-alone subject matter in Western art. The unique pr ...

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Curator's Corner

Artist Birthday: Matsuzaki Kenichi

Wednesday, October 15, 2025 | Karl Cole

Kenichi Matsuzaki exemplifies the richness of the contemporary ceramic art of Japan. His rough surface stoneware works pay tribute to the centuries old traditions of Japanese ceramics, one of the ...

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Curator's Corner

Ode to Autumn Pattern: Kawanishi Hide

Tuesday, September 16, 2025 | Karl Cole

One of the traditions of Japanese art through the ages has been documenting the seasons and months of the year in art. My particular favorites are representations of autumn (it’s only a week awa ...

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