The Peabody Essex Museum invites you to discover our planet’s polar regions in Polar Attractions, a new exhibition at the museum’s Art & Nature Center, running from June 28, 2008 through June 7, 2009.

The Peabody Essex Museum unveils Wedded Bliss, The Marriage of Art and Ceremony, a wide-ranging exploration of the wedding as artistic inspiration across cultures, lifestyles and three centuries.

The Tamagawa University Dance and Taiko Group brings its thunderous brand of taiko drumming to the Peabody Essex Museum with nearly 30 drummers and dancers. Since 1961 the group has amazed audiences the world over with its high-energy performances, using instruments that produce a striking and dramatic sound.

On February 23, the Peabody Essex Museum will open a remarkable exhibition of moko, the facial and body tattooing of Maori, New Zealand's indigenous people. Thirty large-format portraits by award-winning photographer Hans Neleman and related 19th-century and contemporary Maori woodcarvings explore this tattoo tradition.

The exhibition features a rotating selection of over forty 19th-century prints — including works by famed print designer Utagawa Kunisada (1786 – 1864) — as well as rare kabuki-related objects, such as costumes, photographs and advertising signs. Curated by Midori Oka, PEM associate curator of Japanese art and culture, Stage Idols opens Feb. 2, 2008, and runs through Jan. 25, 2009.

Recognized as the architect who transformed Salem, Massachusetts, into one of the most beautiful towns in America, Samuel McIntire was also a woodcarver who established one of the first significant carving traditions in the new nation. The exhibition opens at Peabody Essex Museum on Oct. 13, 2007, and runs through Feb. 24, 2008.

Closing Aug. 19, 2007 at Peabody Essex Museum, the critically acclaimed exhibition is the first major retrospective of the artist’s work in more than 26 years.

From depictions of animals and nature to portraits and abstract forms, the exhibition demonstrates the diversity of technique and interpretation possible in contemporary origami. Presented in the museum's Art & Nature Center, Origami Now! features interactive stations where visitors of all ages can make origami, play with moveable, "action" origami, and discover the fascinating processes used to make these intricate creations.

Opening at Peabody Essex Museum, Accidental Mysteries explores the power of the everyday snapshot in modern culture, presenting 69 vintage images of surprising beauty and creativity. This engaging and popular traveling exhibition is based on the John and Teenuh Foster Collection of vernacular photography.

Gateway Bombay presents the work of 13 artists who are deeply connected to the city, which is today—60 years after India's independence—a booming commercial and financial hub and a leading center of the art world. The exhibition features major paintings, works on paper, photographs and a mixed-media installation created over the past four decades and as recently as 2006.

Perfect Imbalance, Exploring Chinese Arts illuminates the visual themes that have prevailed in China through centuries of dynastic change, social upheaval and influences from other cultures. As China continues to evolve, these aesthetic constants are brought into contact with the contemporary and the new, re-appearing in a variety of novel formats and interpretations.

Based in an 800-year-old tradition of paper folding, modern origami has grown into a highly sophisticated, international art form. Origami Now! assembles over 60 works by 24 of the world's foremost contemporary origami artists-including Eric Joisel, Satoshi Kamiya, Michael LaFosse, Robert Lang and Jeannine Mosely.