Current exhibitions
Perspectives: Ai Weiwei
May 12, 2012–April 7, 2013
This exhibition features prolific Chinese artist Ai Weiwei's monumental installation Fragments (2005). Noting the abundance of antique wood on the market, Ai had a number of pieces transported from Guangdong to his studio in Beijing to create a series of objects and installations. Fragments is a culmination of that body of work. Working with a team of skilled carpenters, Ai turned pillars and beams of ironwood (or tieli) salvaged from several dismantled Qing dynasty temples into a large-scale, seemingly chaotic work, which he calls an "irrational structure." Yet examined more closely, one discovers that the installation is an elaborate system of masterful joinery and delicate balance relations. Seen from above, the entire complex is anchored by poles marking out the borders of a map of China. Through his simultaneously destructive and creative process, Ai highlights the bewildering reality that we live in the midst of a world undergoing rapid spatial and social transformations. Perspectives: Ai Weiwei is presented concurrently with a retrospective of Ai Weiwei's works at the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.
Reinventing the Wheel: Japanese Ceramics 1930–2000
Continues indefinitely
Modern and contemporary Japanese ceramics were among the first of many new directions in collecting made possible by the opening of the Sackler Gallery in 1987. Today, the Sackler collection represents significant trends in Japanese ceramics since the 1930s, when traditional workshop masters took on new roles as studio potters alongside artists in other media. Potters at regional kilns revived ancient firing and glazing technology for use in expressive new vessel forms. In postwar Kyoto, ceramic artists departed from conventional ideas of function to create sculptural forms. Today's potters sample at will from these trends, blending meticulous skill with daring reinterpretations of shapes and materials. This installation of highlights spans legendary Living National Treasures to young virtuosos of the present day.
Xu Bing: Monkeys Grasping for the Moon
Continues indefinitely
"Monkeys Grasping for the Moon," a suspended sculpture designed specifically for the Sackler Gallery, was created by expatriate Chinese artist Xu Bing (b. 1955) as part of a solo exhibition of his work in October 2001 titled "Word Play: Contemporary Art by Xu Bing." The popular temporary display was re-created under Xu Bing's supervision to enable it to remain at the Sackler Gallery for permanent view. Highly skilled craftspeople from the Smithsonian's Office of Exhibits Central worked with Xu Bing and Sackler staff to engineer and fabricate this highly complex artwork, marking the first time the Smithsonian has worked directly with a contemporary artist to build an artwork.
Comprised of 21 laminated wood pieces which each form the word "monkey" in one of a dozen different languages, the linked vertebrates flow from the sky-lit atrium through the gallery's stairwell down to the third-level reflecting pool.
This work is based on a Chinese folk tale in which a group of monkeys attempt to capture the moon. Linking arms and tails, they form a chain reaching down from the branch of a tree to the moon's shimmering reflection on the surface of a pool lying beneath them, only to discover the things we work hardest to achieve may prove to be nothing but an illusion.
Visitors to the gallery will find a panel on every level of the museum guiding them through each represented language, which includes Indonesian, Urdu, Hebrew, Braille and eight others.
Xu Bing's monumental sculpture is presented by the family of Madame Chiang Kai-shek (Chiang Soong Mayling 1898-2003) in commemoration of her historic visits to the Joint Session of Congress in 1943 and a memorable return to the U.S. Capitol in 1995.
A quote from Madame Chiang's address to Congress on February 18, 1943 reads: "We in China, like you, want a better world, not for ourselves alone, but for all mankind, and we must have it."
