Illustration from the 1990s treatment showing all the different support materials for Whistler’s painting. From Wendy Samet, Joyce Hill Stoner, and Richard Wolbers, “Approaching the Cleaning of Whistler’s Peacock Room: Retrieving Surface Interrelationships in ‘Harmony in Blue and Gold,’” Studies in Conservation, 35: sup 1 (1990), 6–12, https://doi.org/10.1179/sic.1990.35.s1.002. As we write this, the second phase of the Peacock Room conservation project is winding down and installation of the ceramics is underway. Work during the second phase focused on areas of the room painted by James McNei ..read more

The first phase of the Peacock Room conservation project ended in July after two months of intense activity by NMAA staff and Aeon Preservation, specialists in architectural conservation. This phase of the treatment on the shutters, windows, window surrounds, and vents has improved their condition, appearance, and function, and it has brought to light new information about the room’s previous treatment and history. The issues which have been addressed are detailed in an earlier post in this series. We solved the problem of the shutters catching and abrading the sills by lightly sanding the unp ..read more

If you’ve visited the museum on a weekday recently, you may have heard noises coming from inside the Peacock Room, and your view of the space may have been temporarily limited by metal gates. The first phase of the conservation project has started, and those noises you hear are NMAA staff and contractors from Aeon Preservation Services hard at work! As we talked about in our previous blog, the first phase focuses on the treatment of the shutter exteriors, their associated windows and window surrounds, and four floor vent covers that were not addressed in the earlier treatment campaign that too ..read more

Currently undergoing conservation for the first time in thirty years, James McNeill Whistler’s masterpiece will reopen with a new installation of ceramics in September 2022. The project will be divided into two parts: the first phase will address the windows and floor vents, and the second will address the painted surfaces of the room. Check our website for monthly updates as the project progresses. Created by Whistler from 1876 to 1877, Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room was installed at the Freer Gallery of Art prior to the museum’s opening in 1923. Most of the painted surfaces visit ..read more

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With his brilliant new fiction feature A New Old Play, the contemporary Chinese artist and independent director Qiu Jiongjiong has emerged as one of the most daring and innovative filmmakers in China. Born in 1977 in Leshan, Sichuan province, Qiu grew up in an environment steeped in traditional Chinese opera. His grandfather, Qiu Fuxin (the subject of Ode to Joy), was a celebrated performer of clown (chou) roles in Sichuan opera. The elder Qiu, who was born in 1927 and died in 1987, performed with the Xinyouxin Opera Troupe, where Qiu’s maternal grandmother Lin Zhigang (the subject of My Mothe ..read more

Art history has often been a medium through which students, researchers, and scholars are able to describe and appreciate the cultures and aesthetics of past people and places. Museums and institutions around the world have relied on longstanding, traditional practices of documenting and analyzing art and its history in order to better understand the stories that material objects and sacred spaces have to tell. As a result, digital art history and digital tools used in art history may seem incongruous with the world of paintings, museum archives, and centuries-old research libraries. But as ar ..read more

Winter is upon us, and the frosty air has turned our attention toward indoor gatherings with family and friends, safely following COVID-19 precautions, of course. For this month’s installment of Unseen Art History, a blog series highlighting stories about how objects came to the National Museum of Asian Art, read on to explore how Utagawa Toyoharu’s (1735–1814) painting, A Winter Party, came to Washington, DC.   Utagawa Toyoharu, active in Japan during the late eighteenth and early&nbs ..read more

Read on to learn about the journey of this ceramic wine cup from the Red River Delta in Northeast Vietnam to Washington, DC, in this month’s feature of our Unseen Art History blog series, which highlights provenance stories about how objects came to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art.   Wine cup from Hoi An Hoard shipwreck, Vietnam, Hai Duong province, Chu Dau kilns, Later Le dynasty, late 15th century, stoneware with translucent iron glaze and with cobalt pigment under clear glaze; iron pigment on base, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. David P. Rehfuss, Freer Gallery of Ar ..read more

Sensorial experience—the good and the bad—is at the heart of the human condition and at the root of the suffering from which Buddhism seeks to liberate all beings. It is not surprising, therefore, that we find the five senses at the center of Buddhist stories, rituals, and monasticism, encompassing the ideas and ideals that engage the senses in order to teach how to overcome them. So how can we better understand the paradoxical position of the five senses within Buddhist practice, where they are at once obstacles on the path to buddhahood and the very tools one needs to become awakened? The Ti ..read more