Orientations

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.

This issue focuses on the new installation ‘Across Asia: Arts of Asia and the Islamic World’ at the Walters Art Museum with nearly 600 works of art, many of which are either on display for the first time in almost a decade or for the first time ever. It strives to provide a cross-cultural view of the arts from this geographical expanse. The museum was founded in 1934 in Maryland in the United States when Henry Walters (1848–1931) donated two buildings, an endowment to the City of Baltimore, and a collection started by his father, William T. Walters (1820–94), a businessman with interests in several industries. The founding collection of 22,000 objects across cultures reflected the tastes of the father and son, shaped by Western beliefs prevalent during the 19th and 20th centuries. It has now grown through purchases and further donations to more than 36,000 objects. The museum fulfils its mandate of ‘for the benefit of the public’ with free public admission year-round.

Following in the footsteps of its 2018 exhibition ‘Power and Beauty from China’s Last Dynasty’, produced in collaboration with experimental stage director Robert Wilson, the Minneapolis Institute of Art has teamed up again to open ‘Eternal Offerings: Chinese Ritual Bronzes’, this time with Oscar-winning art director and film designer Tim Yip. Some of Yip’s best-known works include Ang Lee’s film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and John Woo’s Red Cliff. The exhibition will showcase the museum’s archaic Chinese bronzes collection, one of the best in the United States. Yip’s dramatic design emphasizes the power of the senses and as such seeks to transport visitors into the environment for which these works of art were produced. The absence of didactic materials is meant to encourage viewers to experience the exhibition more intuitively.

The China Institute Gallery in New York will finally open ‘Flowers on a River: The Art of Chinese Flower-and-Bird Painting, 1368–1911’, featuring a selection of Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1911) flower-and-bird paintings from the Tianjin Museum and Changzhou Museum. We uncover the transmission of styles but also the invention of new representational modes in the rendering of flower-and-bird paintings from this period.