Museum curator realizes dream of new Japanese art gallery

 

Cultural News, October 2006

 

Meher McArthur, Pacific Asia Museum’s Curator of East Asian Art, explains about new Japanese Art Gallery which will feature changing exhibitions drawn from the museum’s collection. (Cultural News Photo)

 

 

     Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena opened a new Gallery of Japanese Art on Sept. 8 to highlight its outstanding collection of Japanese art. The Gallery has been designed to evoke the interior of a Japanese temple or tea house and will be an appropriate setting for rotations of the museum’s collection of over 4,000 paintings, prints, ceramics and other art works.

 

     The Gallery is the realization of a dream for the museum’s Curator of East Asian Art, Meher McArthur, who has been working at Pacific Asia Museum since 1998, and has been a student of Japanese culture and art for twenty years.

 

    She has curated several exhibitions of Japanese art at Pacific Asia Museum and at other institutions, but has been unsatisfied with the small area of the permanent galleries previously devoted to Japanese art. “I have been working on the concept of a larger, more Japanese-style space for the art for several years now, and finally we’re opening the gallery. It’s an exciting time, since we will be able to display the art in more Japanese-style setting.”

 

    Meher McArthur studied Japanese Studies at Cambridge University, and while a student spent several months in Japan learning about Japanese culture. She stayed with a family who made kimonos in the Nishijin Textile district of Kyoto and was first introduced to kimonos and Japanese pottery during that visit.

 

    After graduation, she spent two years in Oita prefecture in southern Japan working for the Japanese government as a Coordinator for International Relations, and in her free time studied pottery, Japanese traditional calligraphy and ikebana (flower arrangement).

 

     She returned to the UK, and after a short period as a business news translator, she decided to follow her heart and study Japanese art history and enrolled in a postgraduate course in Asian art run jointly by London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies and Sotheby’s, followed by a Master’s Course in Japanese art. After working for a London art dealer for a year cataloging Japanese books and prints, she was offered a position at Pacific Asia Museum, and moved to Los Angeles for the job.

 

      “I didn’t grow up wanting to be a museum curator or art historian. In fact, I was interested in being a business woman, and that was my original motivation for studying Japanese. But when I spent time in Japan and started to become familiar with Japanese art - particularly the ceramics - I was hooked. I decided to make this my career,” says McArthur.

 

      The opening of the museum’s new Gallery of Japanese Art marks twenty years since McArthur first started studying Japanese art and culture, but it was actually made possible largely due to the generosity of a Japanese woman and her American husband who McArthur first met when she was in her mother’s womb! McArthur first met Toshie and Frank Mosher a few years after joining Pacific Asia Museum.

 

      Toshie is a member of Pacific Asia Museum’s Board of Trustees. When talking to Frank at a museum event, she discovered that he and Toshie had known her parents in India, where McArthur was born. It was partly this special link with McArthur, as well as Toshie and Frank’s enthusiasm for Japanese art and art education, which persuaded them to help fund this new Japanese Gallery. “The Moshers have been incredibly generous and supportive with this project. We couldn’t have done it without them,” admits McArthur.

 

     As the first exhibition in the gallery, McArthur thought it was important to introduce visitors to the fact that there is more than one Japanese artistic style. Most people are familiar with the simple, austere style of art that they see in Zen rock gardens and Japanese tatami mat rooms, and think of that as the Japanese aesthetic.  

 

    “That is certainly one of the most important Japanese aesthetic threads at work in Japanese culture,” says McArthur, “But there are many more. Look at the dazzling red kimono a bride wears on her wedding day, or the elaborate decoration on some of Kyoto’s most famous shrines and temples - the Golden Pavilion, for example, is hardly austere!

 

     Then there is the whole genre of Japanese manga and anime - a very lively, colorful aesthetic that is different still.” According to McArthur, different aesthetics developed over the centuries in Japan in response to the tastes and requirements of a variety of artistic patrons.

 

     The imperial court of Kyoto, Japan’s ancient capital, admired the refined and elegant in all aspects of life, and the art of the court reflects this - a style known as miyabi, best represented in elegant black lacquered items decorated with delicate designs in gold and silver.

 

     The samurai warriors, who ruled Japan from the 12th to 19th century, used a more ostentatious style (McArthur calls this kabi, or “showy”) to decorate the interior of their castles, decorated their walls and doors with large, bold designs of tigers and lions on gold backgrounds to show of their military and political authority.

 

     Under the same leaders, however, the tea ceremony also evolved, under the guidance of tea masters versed in Zen principles of simplicity, spontaneity and humility.

 

     An aesthetic known as wabi (beauty in the simple and rustic), and the closely related sabi (a beauty that comes with age and wear) were strongly emphasized in the context of the tea ceremony, giving rise to the simple tatami-mat tea room with a thatched roof, and the rough-looking tea bowls from the Raku and other kilns. These aesthetics have had a powerful impact beyond the tea ceremony into the worlds of flower arrangement, food, architecture and interior design.

 

      Another important element in Japanese artistic style is playfulness, or asobi, that can be found in Zen ink paintings, ukiyo-e woodblock prints, folk toys, and the carved netsuke toggles that served as counterweights for objects worn suspended from the sash of a kimono.

 

      These were often carved with playful designs and were actually meant to be fondled and played with by the wearer. “Many people think of the Japanese as very serious people, but there is a very humorous, playful side to the Japanese that comes out clearly in its art,” says McArthur.

 

      The gallery will feature changing exhibitions drawn from the museum’s collection, and occasionally supplemented from private collections. There are some features in the gallery that will remain permanent: a rare, 15th-century Buddhist temple ceiling and a tokonoma alcove. The ceiling features 39 wooden panels painted with images of the Buddhist deity Kannon, and was given to the museum especially for this new gallery. The tokonoma, an alcove for displaying art, was built especially for the gallery and is used to display art the way it was shown traditionally in Japanese homes, temples and tea rooms.

 

    The gallery was designed by Carol Porter Exhibits, in collaboration with the museum staff. “Carol has a real understanding of Japanese sensibilities,” says McArthur. “I think we have created something unique here that the Japanese community will be proud of and non-Japanese who are interested in Japanese culture will find very informative.”

 

    Pacific Asia Museum is located at 46 North Los Robles Avenue in Pasadena.  Admissions are $7 for general and $5 for students and seniors. The museum opens Wednesday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and until 8 p.m. Friday. For more information, call (626) 449-2742 or visit www.pacificasiamuseum.org.