Asian Art

Kung-Lee Wang applauded as a 75-foot golden silk dragon wove through the cobblestone streets in front of the Hackerman House to celebrate yesterday's grand opening of the Museum of Asian Art at the Walters Art Gallery.He called the dragon, an Asian symbol of pulsating energy, a fitting mascot for yesterday's celebration. To him, the new museum demonstrates the increased pride and activity of the state's growing Asian-American community."We are starting to speak out and get involved with culture and politics," said Mr. Wang, a Rockville resident who is a founder of the nationwide Organization of Chinese Americans.

Doris Ligon may be Baltimore born and bred, but she can't seem to get her mind off Africa. "I was in my 30s before I heard anything positive about Africa," recalls Ligon, 77, who, along with her late husband, Claude, opened the African Art Museum of Maryland in Columbia in 1980. Since 2011, the museum has held forth closer to Laurel, in cozy space in Maple Lawn, just off the lobby of the Baltimore-Washington Conference of the United Methodist Church. "In those days, it was called the Dark Continent.

Laurance Page Roberts, an internationally known Asian art scholar who had been director of the American Academy in Rome, died Sunday of a heart attack at his Bolton Hill home. He was 95. Mr. Roberts' career in the world of art and culture spanned about 70 years. He had lived in a Bolton Street rowhouse since 1988, when he and his wife moved to Baltimore after 15 years in Venice, Italy. Born into a life of privilege in Bala Cynwyd, Pa., Mr. Roberts was a descendant of settlers who arrived in Pennsylvania in the 1600s to accept a land grant from William Penn.

Last winter, Leann Kwak put her senior year at Arundel High School on hold to pursue her dreams as a chart-topping pop singer. For nearly three months, thousands of TV viewers determined whether or not she'd move on to the next round of the competition. But this wasn't "American Idol. "Kwak, a Korean-American born and raised in Odenton, was a Top 24 finalist on "K-Pop Star," the South Korean equivalent to "Idol. " And while she didn't win, Kwak says that concentrating on her goal kept her motivated while living in a foreign country.

Baltimore's Walters Art Museum, already a significant repository of Asian artworks, announced a gift yesterday of more than 150 works that moves it to the forefront of American museums with such collections. The gift, which includes such items as an accordion-pleated manuscript depicting elephants real and divine, a 6-foot-high Burmese lacquer image of the Buddha and a 19th-century carved wooden pulpit from Thailand, came from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, which holds the many works collected by the late heiress and philanthropist.

IT is no secret that the Walters Art Gallery has always had impressive holdings in Asian art. William T. Walters was a voracious collector of such art in the second half of the 19th century, but much of this art remained in storage, from his day to our own, for lack of exhibition space. With the opening Sunday of Hackerman House, the new museum of Asian art at the Walters, we can all finally get a look at what has been uncrated.Until recently, the Walters had a mere 125 pieces of Asian art on display in a section of the 1974 museum annex.

William Morris, a leader of the 19th-century arts & crafts movement in England, was a polymath who created designs for textiles, wrote poetry and published magnificently crafted, illustrated books. During his lifetime, he was something of a contradiction: a well-born aristocrat who championed socialism, a Renaissance man of the industrial era and an unapologetic romantic who drew much of his inspiration from the Gothic art of the Middle Ages. Now Morris' wide-ranging interests are highlighted in a small but delightful show of his designs for fabrics, wallpaper and tapestries at the Baltimore Museum of Art. The show includes many beautiful examples of Morris' elegant woven woolens, block-printed cotton fabrics and floral designs inspired by Near Eastern and Asian art. As an interior designer, Morris aimed to create total environments that would surround a home's inhabitants with beauty.

The Walters Art Museum, in the midst of years-long renovation project, will close all of its galleries except those housing Asian art for five months beginning May 1. Until the galleries re-open on Oct. 20, anyone wishing to view Asian treasures, from a seventh-century lacquer-and-wood Buddha to a 20th-century vessel decorated with plum blossoms, will be admitted without charge to the Hackerman House gallery in the 600 block of N. Charles St. during regular...

A rare gathering of some of China's most accomplished musicians met yesterday in Baltimore, bringing the delicate sounds of traditional flute, guitar and fiddle music to a Johns Hopkins University audience.In performances that ranged from somber to contemplative to whimsical -- including pantomime and singing by Peking Opera star Xueling Qing, who has won China's highest honor for dramatic singing -- the six musicians evoked for an audience of about 150 the sights and sounds of a distant land.

Nothing is less real than realism," Georgia O'Keeffe once said. "Details are confusing. It is only by selection, by elimination, by emphasis that we get at the real meaning of things."

When the Chu San Chinese Opera Institute bows at the Many Moons Festival on Sunday, audience members will be able to tell the personalities of the characters on stage simply by looking into their faces. According to traditions developed more than 3,000 years ago, characters wearing red makeup will invariably be intelligent, courageous, loyal and full of integrity. Black greasepaint represents firmness of purpose and honesty, while those with blue visages will prove stubborn and intractable.

Freer at 100 It was the first of the Smithsonian Institution's art galleries. And this year it's celebrating its centennial. The Freer Gallery of Art presents a daylong celebration Saturday. The museum was founded in 1906 by Detroit railroad-car manufacturer Charles Lang Freer, who donated his Asian art collection to the Smithsonian Institution's regents and donated money for the building in which to house the art. Today, the museum still houses an extensive collection of east Asian art. All day Saturday, visitors to the museum can take part in an Asian-themed 100th birthday celebration.

Mary Ellen Reno, a well-known Walters Art Museum docent and world traveler who relished sharing her enthusiasm and appreciation for Asian art with gallery visitors, died of lung cancer Saturday at her Towson home. She was 69. She was born Mary Ellen Klock in Rochester, N.Y., and raised in Verona, N.J., and Chambersburg, Pa., where she graduated from high school in 1952. After earning a degree in French from Bryn Mawr College in 1956, she taught school for a year in Devon, Pa. In 1957, she married Russell R. Reno Jr., a lawyer and partner in the Baltimore law firm of Venable LLP. While raising her four children, Mrs. Reno worked during the 1980s as a part-time tour guide for the now-defunct Baltimore Rent-A-Tour, which provided tours of the area for visiting conventions and guests attending meetings.

To the historian of Asian art, it's a three-color glazed earthenware tomb sculpture from the Tang dynasty (618-907 A.D.) that reflects the fabulous wealth of the emperors who grew rich from caravans plying the ancient Silk Road. But to a kid seeing it for the first time, it's just a cool toy animal with funny humps on its back. It's certainly a long way from the child's point of view to that of the serious scholar, museum curator or collector. Yet art educators know there's a direct line that runs between the knowledgeable adult museumgoer and the youth whose first response to the camel was, "Gee whiz!"

William Morris, a leader of the 19th-century arts & crafts movement in England, was a polymath who created designs for textiles, wrote poetry and published magnificently crafted, illustrated books. During his lifetime, he was something of a contradiction: a well-born aristocrat who championed socialism, a Renaissance man of the industrial era and an unapologetic romantic who drew much of his inspiration from the Gothic art of the Middle Ages. Now Morris' wide-ranging interests are highlighted in a small but delightful show of his designs for fabrics, wallpaper and tapestries at the Baltimore Museum of Art. The show includes many beautiful examples of Morris' elegant woven woolens, block-printed cotton fabrics and floral designs inspired by Near Eastern and Asian art. As an interior designer, Morris aimed to create total environments that would surround a home's inhabitants with beauty.

Baltimore's Walters Art Museum, already a significant repository of Asian artworks, announced a gift yesterday of more than 150 works that moves it to the forefront of American museums with such collections. The gift, which includes such items as an accordion-pleated manuscript depicting elephants real and divine, a 6-foot-high Burmese lacquer image of the Buddha and a 19th-century carved wooden pulpit from Thailand, came from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, which holds the many works collected by the late heiress and philanthropist.

The distinction between art and craft has long been debated, and it is unlikely to be resolved as long as so-called "craftsmen" continue to create objects of surpassing beauty that transcend any utilitarian purpose. We have long since come to accept many functional objects, such as Chinese porcelain, Tiffany lamps, African masks, even Ferrari automobiles, as works of art in their own right, independent of the purpose for which they were created. A great deal of Asian art falls into this category, a reflection of both our appreciation for its exquisite workmanship and its philosophical relationship to traditional Eastern ideas about the value of simplicity, elegance and grace in even commonplace objects.

Chinese ceramics and jades, Korean celadons, Japanese lacquer and ceramics, Indian sculptures and Tibetan bronzes are among the works on view in "Marylanders Collect Asian Art" at Towson State.Organized to coincide with the university's monthlong celebration of Asian culture, the exhibit was selected by John Gilmore Ford, a leading collector of Asian art and founder of the Friends of the Asia Collection at the Walters Art Gallery. The show includes about 100 objects from more than half a dozen Maryland collectors, plus pieces on loan from the Baltimore Museum of Art, including the one shown here.

Laurance Page Roberts, an internationally known Asian art scholar who had been director of the American Academy in Rome, died Sunday of a heart attack at his Bolton Hill home. He was 95. Mr. Roberts' career in the world of art and culture spanned about 70 years. He had lived in a Bolton Street rowhouse since 1988, when he and his wife moved to Baltimore after 15 years in Venice, Italy. Born into a life of privilege in Bala Cynwyd, Pa., Mr. Roberts was a descendant of settlers who arrived in Pennsylvania in the 1600s to accept a land grant from William Penn.