NOV/DEC 2017

VOLUME 48 - NUMBER 6

This November, the Sir Joseph Hotung Gallery of China and South Asia at The British Museum will reopen following a refurbishment. Now, paintings and textiles can be displayed alongside inorganic objects and the narrative has been brought up to the present. We interview Jane Portal, Keeper of the Department of Asia, Stuart Frost, Head of Interpretation, and Pippa Nissen of Nissen Richards Studio about the gallery’s design and the collections’ new display. Conservators Jin Xian Qiu and Carol Weiss discuss the work done on the Chinese painting Gathering of Immortals by Zhang Chong for the gallery, and curator Imma Ramos introduces some Indian Ragamala paintings, which can now be placed on view.

We also introduce a previously unpublished group of Chola bronzes, which entered a European private collection in 1962 and are presented here by John Guy of the Met. Jin Xu reveals how the carvings on two Northern Wei pictorial stone panels in the Art Institute of Chicago are changing the way we look at early medieval Chinese art. Katherine Anne Paul considers a type of Korean folding screen known as chaekgeori, which depict treasured possessions such as books and are currently the subject of a travelling exhibition, and Richard Pegg uncovers the stories of trade embedded in various maps of Nagasaki.

For ‘Artists as Collectors’, we interview the Chinese artist Wang Tiande. And for ‘Art in Context’, curator Felice Fischer relates the story of the Sunkaraku-an teahouse at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

FEATURES
Jin Xian Qiu and Carol Weiss. Conservation of Gathering of Immortals for the Sir Joseph Hotung Gallery of China and South Asia
Imma Ramos. A Garland of Melodies: Ragamala Paintings for the Rajput, Mughal and Sultanate Courts
John Guy. Celebrating Shiva in the Chola-mandalam: Processional Bronzes in Medieval South India
Jin Xu. A Natural Approach to Nature: Two Pictorial Stone Panels in the Art Institute of Chicago
Katherine Anne Paul. ‘Chaekgeori: The Power and Pleasure of Possessions in Korean Painted Screens’
Richard A. Pegg. Nagasaki, Maps and Trade in the Pacific Rim
Artists as Collectors. Wang Tiande: Transforming Art by Collecting
Curator's Choice. A Sparrow and Some Trees by Richard M. Barnhart
Art in Context. The Sunkaraku-an: A Teahouse for Philadelphia by Felice Fischer
PREVIEWS & REVIEWS
Lianming Wang. Book Review: Thirty-Six Views: The Kangxi Emperor’s Mountain Estate in Poetry and Prints— Poems by the Kangxi Emperor with Illustrations by Shen Yu and Matteo Ripa
Asian Art in London 2017
INTERVIEWS
The Sir Joseph Hotung Gallery of China and South Asia at The British Museum
NEWS
Dina Bangdel (1964–2017)
Stephen Robert Rineberg (1937–2017)
Emerging Voices – Yi Chen
Announcements
Gallery News
COMMENTRAY
Aspi Mistry. Neglect of Buddhist Sites: The Enigma of Indian Archaeology