Orientations is a bimonthly print magazine published in Hong Kong and distributed worldwide since 1969. It is an authoritative source of information on the many and varied aspects of the arts of East and Southeast Asia, the Himalayas, the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East, from the latest scholarly research to market analysis and current news.

A digital subscription gives you access to back issues of Orientations from 2019. For a print subscription which comes with complimentary digital access, please visit our website at www.orientations.com.hk.

Latest issue

The January/February 2021 issue of Orientations features new research on archaic Chinese bronze plates and their evolution from three-dimensional to two-dimensional objects during the Warring States period (475–221 BCE). We look at The Wanfa Guiyi Hall in the Little Potala, one of the largest imperial Buddhist temples of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) built by the Qianlong emperor (1711–99) in Chengde, Hebei Province, China, and its continuous decline post-construction. Richard Pegg talks about early pottery traditions of the river valleys south of the Yangzi River and the emergence of stoneware.

We mark the 50th anniversary of the Min Chiu Society, a group founded in 1960 by Chinese collectors from Shanghai and Hong Kong and we interview its chairman. Nadia Lau documents the friendship between Wu Guanzhong (1919–2010), a French-educated Chinese artist, and Professor Michael Sullivan (1913–2013), a scholar in the study of Modern Chinese art.

We reveal the influence of Zen Buddhism on Kakutei Jōkō’s (1722–1786) and his cross-regional religious roots.

Nancy Steinhardt reviews Architecture of the Islamic West by Jonathan Bloom and Liu Yang, Curator of Chinese Art, Head of China, South and Southeast Asian Art, Minneapolis Institute of Art writes for ‘Curator’s Choice’.