I’m back (I think). That was a longer absence than I expected. Well, I’m back for now with a new Friday roundup.

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“Take advantage of what exists.” — Laozi

• Rare Buddha statue unveiled at Ho Chi Minh City Museum : An interesting eighth-century Buddha image
• 50 Years of Iranian animation : An exhibition at  Queensland Art Gallery; a few sample stills are shown
• Kenta Torimoto : Championing Japanese art in Shanghai
• Ten Contemporary Indian Artists : Presented by Ravin Agrawai
• Reviewing 20th-century Chinese art : An interview with Eric Chang

“Take advantage of what exists.” — Laozi

• Maya Lin’s big dig : Museum of Chinese in America to be NY Chinatown’s culture hub
• History of the Khukuri : A national symbol of Nepal
• Jain manuscripts at the Met : An ancient tradition
• Kishi Ganku’s Bamboo Forest : A Superlative Japanese screen
• Manga Kamishibai : The Art Of Japanese Paper Theater
• LACMA’s reinstalled Korean galleries : Joseon porcelains among the highlights
• A family visits the Asian art museum : Korean galleries a highlight
• Photographing Southeast Asia : Prabir Purkayastha at the Art Alive Gallery, New Delhi

“Take advantage of what exists.” — Laozi

• Asia in Paris : “a continued desire for an exotic and ‘orientalized’ Asia”
• Chinese shadow puppets at Princeton : Part of a 2,000-piece collection acquired in the 1920s but only catalogued over the past three years
• A mandala glossary : An updated version at HimalayanArt.com
• Value and contemporary art in India : “The price … is not only a cash quantum but … a measure for the standing of Indian artists”
• “Steeped in History” at the Fowler : Guess what the show is about
• Bird-men of Siam : Not quite celestials but more than human
• Why dictators love kitsch : Reading (or overreading) a North Korean backdrop
• Made in Iran : A contemporary Iranian art exhibit in London

“Take advantage of what exists.” — Laozi

• Chinese traditional art loses youth : “The spirit of the art form isn’t in accordance with today’s society.”
• Mongolian treasures uncovered : From the sands of the Gobi desert
• Diamond Ganesha steals the show : Made from 80,000 American diamonds and 800 colored stones
• A little wabi sabi : “An active aesthetical appreciation of poverty” (D. T. Suzuki)
• Finding Sweetness in Life : Looking for readings on Siam and Burma
• The Trend Toward Director-Based Exhibits : Good or bad?

“Take advantage of what exists.” — Laozi

• Chinese red lacquerward on view at Met : An impressive selection
• Pakistani contemporary art : Its value is increasing
• Jain: Images of Perfection : At the Rubin this fall
• Takashi Murakami : A Retrospective in Format Magazine
• Korean pop star Rain to appear in Enter the Dragon Remake : As hero or villain?
• Islam Retakes Spain : At the Aga Khan Museum Collection in Madrid
• Two thousand years of Vietnamese art : Opening in New York and Houston

“Take advantage of what exists.” — Laozi

• An interview with Zhao Renhui : Wildlife photographer
• Is the Chinese art market ready to recover : Mixed signals
• The eight fears : Of Himalayan art
• Stealing Ganesha : That can’t be auspicious
• Beyond Golden Clouds : Exceptional Japanese screens
• 3rd Gwangju Design Biennale : design in clothing, eating, living, enlightening, and enjoying
• Met plans new Persian gallery as part of a suite of Islamic art galleries : To open in 2011
• Cataloguing art from Burma and Siam : Via the Asian Art Museum blog

Take advantage of what exists. — Laozi

• Japanese mandalas at the Met : Depicting the Buddhist universe
• The art of tea : From Asia to the West
• Streams and Mountains without End : At the Cleveland Museum of Art
• Bali Arts Festival : A month of performances
• Who owns art? : “A now-divided architectural wonder made whole”
• Light of the sufis : The mystical arts of Islam

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Take advantage of what exists. — Laozi

• Protecting an ancient city by razing it? : I don’t think so
• Heroism and Treachery: Paintings from the Safavid and Mughal Empires : At the Philadelphia Museum of Art
• Tibeto-logic: The Rubin’s Situ Panchen Lectures :  On “luminous visionary perfection”
• Maharaja art : At the British Museum
• Japanese manhole covers : An extensive gallery
• Rising Korean Artists : An exhibition in Seoul
  
• Ancient Persian Archive Digitized : At the University of Chicago
• The City Of Batik : Pekalongan, Indonesia
• 5 things you might not have known about the samurai : From the Asian Art Museum’s new blog

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Anyone with an interest in Asian art and culture would be well advised to bookmark or subscribe to the Asian Art Museum’s new blog. The museum team has put a lot of interesting content up already — and the curators haven’t even joined in yet (but will soon).

LINK: Asian Art Museum blog

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“Take advantage of what exists.” — Laozi

• Paris art auction sparks call for return of bronze sculptures : “Everyone knows that the related objects were plundered”
• Modern Tibetan art at Oglethorpe University Museum in Atlanta, Georgia : Breaking stereotypes
• A lost chapter of Indian art : Jodpur paintings at the Seattle Asian Art Museum
• Picasso’s erotic prints : Influenced by Japanese shunga
• Korean artists wow MOMA crowd : A popular success
• World’s oldest carpet : Guess where it’s from (Persia)
• Molten wax, volatile cloth : Indonesia batik and Japanese rozome

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“Take advantage of what exists.” — Laozi

• Spindle Vases by Young-Jae Lee : Variations on a form
• A Papercutting Peasant : Li Hong-Jun
• “Buddha Boy”  Reappears in Southern Nepal : After 20 months in the jungle
• Baby harp seals migrating to Denmark : Cuddly robots for health care
• More pictures of Thailand’s Bottle Temple : Some cool views here

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“Take advantage of what exists.” — Laozi

• Christie’s sets record with Asia art sales
• Passion drives rough diamond (Ling Yaqian)
• Meet Tibetan artist Karma Phuntsok
• Sudarshan Pattnaik’s global warming sand sculpture wins prize
• The Contemporary Tea House: Japan’s Top Architects Redefine a Tradition
• Iranian Cinema
• Balinese artist Ketut Budiana’s Dance of the Witches

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“Take advantage of what exists.” — Laozi

• Asian antiquities expert arrested
• and then Indicted museum director found dead at WA federal prison
• China’s eccentric champion
• Xu Bing: creating English words from Chinese pictograms
• Ratana Pestonji: The father of contemporary Thai cinema

“Take advantage of what exists.” — Laozi

• Beijing sculptor Zhan Wang steels the scene
• ‘Free Tibet’ flags made in China
• AsianWeek on the AAM’s Ming show
• Walking cabbages around Manchester
• Rin Nadeshico’s girls cozy up with giant beasts

The image below, from BBC News, was taken in Allahabad, India, where temperatures have been around 44 degrees Celsius.

Take advantage of what exists. — Laozi

•  Indonesia’s contemporary painters ride a market bubble
• Chris Miller on Toshiko Takaezu
• A Chinese surrealist goes for the gold in SoCal, becomes a great commercial success — at what cost?
• From the Land of the Gods, an exhibition at the Rubin Museum of Art
• On Pico Iyer on the 14th Dalai Lama
• Showcasing Indian art on sand
• The visual translation of Japan in late 19th-century Paris
• Rare maps of South Asia
• Elephants as painters

“Take advantage of what exists.” — Laozi

• Cai Guo-Qiang’s Boom Year
• Gallery for contemporary Thai art opens in Brussels
• Photographing Life in Traditional Korean Architecture
• William Morris and Japan
• Hindu temples being built in Berlin
• Carnival in Goa
• Imaging Everest
• Qi Baishi’s descendants sue 24 publishers for copyright infringement
• Asian art by way of Blondie

“Take advantage of what exists.” — Laozi

• Modern art’s L.A. ‘Seed’
• Samurai dog armor
• Metropolitan Museum Exhibits Chinese Paintings
• Wheel of Deluded Existence, or The Wheel of Life
• Rhythms of India: The Art of Nandalal Bose (1882-1966)
• Origami planes to be launched into outer space

“Take advantage of what exists.” — Laozi

• Harn Museum announces $10 million gift, addition of Asian art wing
• Wear it like the Koreans
• Ainu Rebels
• Nobuo Takahashi’s animated landscapes
• Traces of the Calligrapher: Islamic Calligraphy in Practice
• Beijing’s Olympic architecture
• Welcome the Year of the Rat
• History of Chinese Calligraphy