Asian Art Museum January 2007 Program Calendar

January 18: 37 Isolated Events: Butoh Perfomance featuring Paige Sorvillo:

FREE with museum admission (only $5 after 5:00 pm on Thursdays). Drawing from butoh (a unique and often unusual avant-garde Japanese dance form) and a variety of other movement disciplines, Paige Sorvillo investigates the connection and disconnection between human intimacy and human violence.

37 Isolated Events is a multi-media performance that begins with the normal running temperature of the human body and continues into questions of a facsimile body.

She explores "how the intimate distance and distant intimacy of our networked society distracts us from the immediacy of our own bodies and allows us our daily denial of and complicity in creating a society built on the oppression of others." Paige Sorvillo is the founder and curator of Butoh Oakland; Co-Director of Oakland's Temescal Arts; and Founder and Producer of Oakland's Live Art Evolution festival. She teaches Butoh classes and intensives regularly at Temescal Arts and has been a guest artist at New College's Experimental Performance Institute and at University of San Francisco.

January 2: Celebrate Oshogatsu:

11:00-11:30 am: Kabuki performance, Samsung Hall 12:00-12:45 pm: Storytelling, Meet at the Information Desk 1:00-4:00 pm: Hands-on Activity, Education Studio

Celebrate Oshogatsu, the Japanese New Year, at the Asian Art Museum. Melody Takata presents a Kabuki performance of Tsurukame, with an intimate glimpse into the symbolism and structure of this timeless piece. Tsurukame literally translates into turtle and crane. In the Education Studio, visitors can fold origami paper into turtles and cranes and then look for images of these two ubiquitous creatures in the galleries.

January 6: Mochitsuki! Mochi Pounding Ceremony:

12:00-1:00 pm, Samsung Hall: Hands-on activity: 1:00-4:00 pm, Education Studio

Celebrate the Japanese New Year with Kagami Kai! Join this venerable San Francisco organization as they present the colorful and exciting New Year tradition of mochi (delectable sweet rice cakes) pounding with music, dance, and costumes. In the Education Studio, decorate and write a New Year greeting to friends or family and the museum will send it anywhere in the world.

January 13: Book Nook: A Place Where Sunflowers Grow

Saturday, 1:00-2:30 pm, Education Studio, FREE with museum admission.

Inspired by her family's experiences, author Amy Lee-Tai has crafted a story rooted in one of America's most shameful historical episodes-the internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans during the Second World War The art schools which offered internees moments of solace and self-expression are a little known part of this history. Amy Lee-Tai's gentle prose and Felicia Hoshino's stunning mixed media images are a testimony to hope and how it can survive alongside even the harshest injustice. Join Felicia Hoshino, illustrator of A Place Where Sunflowers Grow, as she talks about her process and the creation of the mixed-media images she used to breathe life into the characters and setting. Then, plant your own sunflower to take home.

January 4: Contemporary Tibetan Arts - Challenges and Surprises

Lecturer: Keila Diehl: SOCIETY FOR ASIAN ART-ARTS OF ASIA LECTURE SERIES SPRING 2007 The Arts of Japan, Part II: Medieval through Modern Periods.

Fridays, January 19-April 27, 2007

10:00 am-12:00 pm, Jewish Community Center of San Francisco - 3200 California Street at Presidio, $125 Society for Asian Art members; $160 non-members; $50 active docents, drop-ins; $15 per lecture at admission; $5 docent drop-in.

The spring lecture series will continue the chronological survey of Japanese art begun in the fall of 2006. January will be devoted to exploring the complex role of art within the Zen monastic community. In February we will consider the composition of Momoyama period decorative ensembles, examining both castle interiors and tea ceremony aesthetics. Lectures in March and April will focus on key themes in the Edo and Meiji period art world: new patterns of art acquisition, artists workshop and training methods, the representation of fashionable urban and landscape themes, and encounters between Japan and the West, especially after the midnineteenth century. Noted scholars from several fields will continue to explore the religious, political, and social ramifications of art production in Japan, as a framework for appreciating and interpreting works from the Asian Art Museum collection.

By www.asianart.org