A change of season
The Spencer Museum of Art's Asian art gallery is in a constant state of renewal, and curator John Teramoto is in charge.
John Teramoto is the curator of Asian art at the Spencer Museum of Art. The painting in the background is by the 18th century Chinese artist I Fu-chiu and is titled "Landscape."
By Cathleen Siechta
Kansan staff writer
"It's always nice to have some type of theme in exhibits," Teramoto said. "And a very common theme in Asian art that we play upon here is the changing seasons."
The seasons are changing, and that's good news for John Teramoto, curator for the Asian art gallery in the Spencer Museum of Art.
Teramoto, who has been curator of the Asian art gallery since the fall semester, said that a display with a seasonal theme was planned for the next gallery change, scheduled for early next month.
"The display will primarily consist of paintings that have to do with spring, like plum blossoms and flowering bushes," Teramoto said. "Although that's the overall unifying theme, there will be works from very different schools of Asian art. Visually, there will be a great variety."
Taramoto, who also teaches Asian art history, took the job of curator after the gallery had gone without one for two years. He said it was the perfect job for him because he enjoyed working with art objects as well as teaching about them.
"Everyone cautioned me that this was called a joint position, to be a professor and curator," he said. "But it feels like two positions to me."
Teramoto said that the most important part of his job was displaying the collection for the public.
And there is much for the public to see. The Asian Art Collection contains about 4,000 Asian art objects. With room for only about 30, the Asian art gallery is in a constant state of change.
The coucheon, started from a core collection of Asian decorative art, textiles and Japanese wood-block prints donated by Sallie Casey Thayer in 1917, incorporates many art mediums. In addition to paintings and prints, the collection includes furniture, ceramics, hanging scrolls and sculptures.
"The works from the Japanese Edo period in the 17th and 19th century and the modern Chinese works are still what I would consider the heart of the gallery," Teramoto said. "But through gifts and purchases, the collection is expanding."
Midori Oka, Los Angeles graduate student in art history, said the art museum's Asian collection, paired with the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art's world-famous collection in Kansas City, Mo., provided excellent examples of Asian art.
"It's very difficult to show every period of Asian art," Oka said. "We just can't get everything. Earlier paintings, like 11th and 12th century Japanese and Chinese paintings, are impossible to get. They're just not available. However, I think that our collection really compliments the Nelson gallery in Kansas City because we have some later and earlier works and they have those that fall in-between."
Teramoto said that the Asian art department was in the process of writing an Asian art gallery guide for the art museum but that the project presented a few obstacles.
"The problem comes when we try to define the boundaries of Asian art," he said. "When you try
to write a guide to Asian art, you're trying to group it all together. As soon as you do that, you're likely to confuse people. It should be known that there is a very clear distinction between Japanese art, Korean art, Chinese art, Southeast Asian art and so on."
Oka said that the collections also showed the differences between Asian and Western art.
"For one thing, the materials used in Asian art are very different than what is used in Western
art," she said. "There are no canvases in Asian art. There are a lot of ink on papers and ink on silks. Also, things don't look as three-dimensional in Asian art because perspective was never really relevant. But even without three dimensions, the same kinds of effects can be reached because Asian art imitates exactly what you see."
The art gallery's hours are 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Tuesday through Saturday. It is open until 9 p.m.
Thursdays and from noon to 5 p.m. Sundays.
Foreign Oscar picks standardized
By Bob Thomas The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES — The Academy Award for best foreign language picture, often a battleground for filmmakers and countries, has avoided controversy this year, thanks to changes in the rules.
decided the film was Argentine although it had been entered by Uruguay.
Verbal battles have raged over the years when films were denied nomination by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science's seemingly arbitrary rules. Last year the highly regarded "A Place in the World" was disqualified because the academy
Last June, the academy ruled that what mattered was that a certain percentage of the creative personnel were from the country that submitted the film.
A look at the entries:
The Fernando Trueba film is a romantic tale set in 1931 about a handsome army deserter who is befriended by a wise old painter whose four daughters come to visit
"Belle Epoque," Spain:
him. The young man manages to bed each of them.
"Farewell My Concubine," Hong Kong:
Chen Kaige's epic was at first banned from theaters in China. The reasons, Chen said, were its depictions of homosexuality, the Cultural Revolution and suicide.
A movie in Welsh? That's a first for the foreign language race.
"Hedd Wyn," Great Britain:
"Hedd Wyn" is a lyric tale of a young Welsh poet who wins a prestigious award and dies on the battlefield in
World War I.
"The Scent of Green Papaya," Vietnam:
Director Tran Anh Hung wrote the screenplay about a girl who is hired as a maid by a Saigon merchant in 1951; the film also depicts her life 10 years later.
"The Wedding Banquet," Taiwan:
"The Wedding Banquet, Taiwan. The film is highlighted by a huge Chinese wedding feast. The wedding is staged merely to fool the parents of the bridegroom, who don't realize their son lives in New York with an American man.
People and places at the University of Kansas.
LEAD STORY
Iowa child welfare officials have begun collecting past-due support from the paycheck of Rodney Darnell, 24, of Burlington, Iowa, on behalf of 7-year-old Eric Weber. A DNA test proving that Darnell is not Weber's father was ruled "irrelevant" by authorities, as was the statement by the boy's mother, Elizabeth Weber, that Darnell was not the father. The state's case rests on a paternity ruling in 1987 that Darnell was the father, but he failed to attend that hearing because, he said, he was in high school at the time and had received no notice of the hearing.
THE ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT
— Camden, N.C., sculptor Maria Juliana Kirby-Smith recently offered for sale a 3-foot-high lawn jockey statue of U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond. The sculpture has been displayed at the Blue Spiral 1 Gallery in Asheville, N.C., and sells for $700.
— From the Atlanta leather-goods shop B.D. Jef fries, the store's most unusual item: a $65 crocodile-skin tampon holder.
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