Exhibition

What is 亞歐堂 meet asian art?

In the Garden of Satisfaction. The Chinese Painting Collection at the Museum Angewandte Kunst

At the Museum Angewandte Kunst, whose extensive Asian collections date back to the late 19th century, Chinese painting remained a niche topic for a long time. However, around sixty works, some of which are highly significant, are now part of the museum’s collection. The exhibition In the Garden of Satisfaction. The Chinese Painting Collection at the Museum Angewandte Kunst is dedicated to these works and runs from 23 March to 14 July 2024. More information is available here.

Academic exhibition catalog available for download here.
Magazine on the exhibition for download here.

Many indicators suggest that Asia will play a central role in world affairs in the 21st century. In Frankfurt am Main, too, Asia’s steadily growing presence has been unmistakable in recent years: as a hub for transport, finance and business, the city already has the largest Korean and one of the largest Japanese communities in continental Europe, and China is also becoming increasingly significant in Frankfurt’s industrial, financial and tourism sectors.

Against this background, but also in view of the outstanding role that the collections of Asian art have played at the Museum Angewandte Kunst for over a hundred years,. Since October 2016 the Museum has dedicated a new space of exchange, discovery, understanding and discussion to the art of Asia with 亞歐堂 meet asian art . Here, changing exhibits from the museum’s unique collections of Asian art find a place in the form of small cabinet exhibitions. At the same time, 亞歐堂 meet asian art is more than just an exhibition space: as a forum for events and presentations, it constantly offers new insights into Asia’s contribution to the art of the world.

The website www.ukipedia.de provides extensive information on the museum’s outstanding collection of Japanese ukiyoe woodblock prints.


Current exhibition 亞歐堂 meet asian art

Foto: Günzel/Rademacher © Museum Angewandte Kunst

29 November 2023 – 24 November 2024

With the new exhibition 亞歐堂 meet asian art. Antique? Renaissance in East Asian Art the Museum Angewandte Kunst is paying tribute to the enthusiasm for antiquity that arose in China around a thousand years ago and had barely developed until then, comparable to the Renaissance in Europe a few centuries later.⁠

More information about the exhibits can be downloaded here.


Past exhibitions 亞歐堂 meet asian art

Foto: Günzel/Rademacher © Museum Angewandte Kunst

亞 歐堂 meet asian art
Peking Glass

29 September 2022 – 4 June 2023

This show presents masterpieces from the Museum Angewandte Kunst’s Peking glass collection, which comprises over one hundred works and is one of the most important of its kind in Europe. The multicoloured cameo glass from China subsequently had a defining impact on European Jugendstil, especially on Émile Gallé, who is known to have studied Chinese glass intensively. Likewise monochrome Peking glass of the 18th and 19th century often manifests surprising forms that anticipate the modernism of Bauhaus.

More information about the exhibits can be downloaded here.

Foto/Photo: Ute Kunze © Museum Angewandte Kunst

The torso of the bronze Buddha from Thailand, the cap of a wheel hub from ancient China, a stoneware “waster” (a piece of ceramic gone wrong during firing) from Korea, and the spacer of a Japanese sword—at first glance these seem to be completely different objects. What unites them: they are all incomplete parts or fragments that have been robbed of their original function and form. The exhibition presents thes e rarely shown objects from the Museum Angewandte Kunst Asian collection and is conceived to inspire a rethinking of notions of completeness, perfection, aesthetic added value, and origin.

More information about the exhibits can be downloaded here.

Foto/Photo: Ute Kunze © Museum Angewandte Kunst

The Museum Angewandte Kunst did present the beauty of the archetypal shape of the bowl.

It showed selected examples from the Far East, including China, Korea, Japan and Southeast Asia, manufactured over fourmillennia in a wide variety of materials and techniques. The Cabinet exhibition did trace a basic form of East Asian product design that evolved from the oldest Neolithic examples –all ceramics –to vessels made of materials such as jade, bronze, cloisonné or glass. Almost all the pieces that were shown come from the Asian collection of the Museum Angewandte Kunst.

Curator: Dr Stephan von der Schulenburg

More information about the exhibits can be downloaded here.

Foto/Photo: Ute Kunze © Museum Angewandte Kunst

The world of mythical creatures belongs to the most fascinating themes within China`s visual culture.

This exhibition presented selected objects from the Museum’s vast Asian Collection that are crafted in a wide range of materials and encompass more than 2,000 years of Chinese cultural and intellectual history.

Curator: Dr Stephan von der Schulenburg

More information about the exhibits can be downloaded here.

To the Chinese, jade has always been more valuable than silver or gold. In Chinese culture the precious stone with the milky grey-green lustre is seen as a symbol of long life and immortality. The high regard for this material explains the enduring popularity of jade-coloured pottery glazes in China ever since the first millennium BC.

In June 2018, the Museum Angewandte Kunst was showing a selection of celadon pottery in its meet asian art exhibition and event forum. With pieces produced over a period of two and a half thousand years, this cabinet exhibition beared impressive witness to the skilful craftsmanship of Chinese potters who used simple, elegant shapes and the unique colour of jade to create objects of great expressive power.

Curator: Dr Stephan von der Schulenburg

More information about the exhibits can be downloaded here.

Wanli Blue and White

In keeping with the preferences of the Ming Emperor Wanli (萬曆 “Ten Thousand Years”), Chinese blue-and-white porcelain dating from his reign (1572–1620) makes use of a wide range of symbols and hidden allusions to refer to happiness, a long life, health, equanimity and other such blessings.

For China, the reign of the Wanli Emperor represented an age of globalization. For the first time, large quantities of Chinese porcelain and other merchandise now found their way to Europe, where they were highly prized as luxury items and copied in part from such products as Frankfurt faience of the Early Baroque.

The 24 objects on view in the 亞歐堂 meet asian art cabinet clearly conveyed the difference between “imperial” porcelain, which also encompasses ware produced for the upscale domestic Chinese market, and the objects manufactured rapidly – and somewhat carelessly – for export to the Middle East and Europe. The oldest of the objects on display here have belonged to the museum’s collection for more than a hundred years. The largest proportion, however, go back to Carl Cords, whose extensive 1943 bequest forms the mainstay of our East Asian holdings.

The aim of this cabinet exhibition was to open a window on the outstanding collection of Chinese ceramics at the Museum Angewandte Kunst. Over several months, this was accordingly the main focus of the programme of guided tours, workshops and lectures accompanying the exhibition 亞歐堂 meet asian art.

Curator: Dr Stephan von der Schulenburg

Download Catalog

Japanese Cloisonné

The characters translate roughly to “Asian-European salon” – opened concurrently with the exhibition Yokohama 1868-1912. When Pictures Learned to Shine on October 7, 2016, marking the occasion by presenting selected masterpieces of Japanese cloisonné enamel from the Meiji, Taishô, and early Shôwa periods (ca. 1870-1935). The enamel works are part of an extensive and precious donation that the Museum Angewandte Kunst was pleased to receive in the summer of 2016.

This outstanding collection has been published in a bilingual catalogue (German/English):
Stephan von der Schulenburg, Matthias Wagner K (eds.): Sieben Schätze. Eine Wunderkammer des japanischen Cloisonnés / Seven Treasures. A Trove of Japanese Cloisonné. Frankfurt/M.: Museum Angewandte Kunst/Köln: Wienand, 2019