City Arts Set for Asia Week

Alexandra Munroe doesn’t hesitate to announce that an Internet search of her name yields a photograph of her in a lip lock with Yoko Ono, whom she considers a “very dear friend.”In a way, Ms. Munroe’s unorthodox self-presentation is not surprising. After all, she is used to breaking new ground. Appointed senior curator of Asian art at the Guggenheim Museum in January 2006, she is the first person to hold that title at a major international museum of modern and contemporary art. As the New York art world prepares for Asia Week — a celebration that takes place next week and includes auctions, gallery shows, the International Asian Art Fair, and the Arts of Pacific Asia Show — Ms. Munroe’s specialty is about to be thrust into its annual spotlight.Armed with fluency in Japanese and a doctorate in history from New York University, Ms. Munroe’s task is to make sure an Asian component is included in all of the Guggenheim’s exhibitions, publications, and educational programs — and to remind the museum’s other curators “of the relevance of Asian artists,” she said. “My job is to make sure that the Asian dimension is represented wherever appropriate in all our activities.”Her mandate is broad and includes curating exhibits featuring the work of Ms. Ono and providing Mandarin, Korean, and Japanese language service in the museum’s guidebooks and audio aides.Among contemporary Asian artists, she said, “there is a great sense that the West has ignored or dismissed their activities. There’s also a sense that a lot of international curators are now traveling to Asia but that very few of them develop a deep commitment to their regions.”Incorporating the Asian angle in all of the Guggenheim’s activities is “not an act of political correctness,” Ms. Munroe said. “It’s an act of historical correctness.”Ms. Munroe is used to being at the forefront. An American citizen, she became in 1994 the first foreign curator ever hired by a Japanese public art institution when she presented “Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky” at the Yokohama Museum of Art. That show — whose subtitle is a reference to a 1961 conceptual music score written by Ms. Ono — later traveled to the now closed Guggenheim SoHo and received acclaim as the first interpretive survey of post-World War II Japanese art presented in America or in Japan.Six years later, Ms. Munroe went on to curate “YES YOKO ONO,” the first multimedia retrospective on Ms. Ono’s work. It won the International Association of Art Critics’s first prize for best museum show originating in New York City.Between 1998 and 2005, she served as the director and vice president of arts and culture at the Japan Society Gallery on 47th Street. Visitors to the Japan Society “were already self-chosen fans. It was a very sophisticated but very small and select audience. There are people who come to the Guggenheim who have no expectation to see Asian art. We’re getting all kinds of audiences who may or may not know how to spell ‘Asia.'”Ms. Munroe’s appointment is part of a larger initiative for the Guggenheim to expand “beyond a more traditional Eurocentric axis,” the director of the museum, Lisa Dennison, said. “The point is really the integration of Asian art and culture into all of our core activities.”“I think the art world recognizes that some of the most exciting art being produced today is coming out of Asia,” Ms. Dennison added. “We want to be on the inside of this — to have first hand knowledge, rather than experiencing these artists through international galleries and art fairs and auction houses, once they have achieved some sort of market recognition.”An expert in contemporary Chinese art at Sotheby’s auction house, Xiaoming Zhang, emphasized that Ms. Munroe’s appointment is due to a sea change in Western attitudes toward the East.“Western curators and museums are looking East for new dynamism, knowledge, and value.” Ms. Zhang said. “The popularity of Asian art is part of the globalization of contemporary art, and Asian art is very much part of the contemporary art experience.”The assistant vice president of Sotheby’s press office, Kristin Gelder, reports a dramatic increase in client demand for Asian contemporary works since about 2004.Last spring, Ms. Gelder said, when Sotheby’s became the first international auction house to hold a dedicated auction of contemporary Asian art in New York, more than 20 artist records were broken, exceeding expectations. And Sotheby’s worldwide total for dedicated sales of contemporary Chinese, Japanese, and Korean art was more than $70 million, with New York sales alone amounting to $30.4 million.Meanwhile, the Guggenheim is now forming an advisory board of artists and scholars to help guide and focus the direction of its new Asian arts initiative, which has already resulted in an exchange exhibition with the National Art Museum of China. Next year, the museum will mount a retrospective on the work of Chinese artist Cai Guo Chang.Ms. Munroe’s first show will appear in 2009. “American Art and the East” will feature about 250 works by about 80 artists and is tentatively intended to go on a world tour. Its goal will be to show the influence of Asia on the work of American artists throughout the 20th century. Of course, Ms. Ono will be among them.Although Ms. Munroe declined to disclose the names of the other artists who will be featured because the show is still in the early planning stages, she said the exhibition will show how American art moved from the European attitude of seeing artwork as the object of enjoyment or contemplation, to an attitude more prevalent in Asia: art as experience.She cites the works of video artist Bill Viola, a Zen Buddhist who was influenced by Asian philosophy and religious thought. His video piece “The Crossing” shows a man being subsumed by water and then by flames. Ms. Munroe said the piece is not meant to represent death, but rather “the transformation of self and the contemplation of nothingness.” Her point, she explained, is to show American museumgoers that the meaning of Asian-influenced art is not always as it appears.

City Arts Set for Asia Week

City Arts Set for Asia Week

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