“Audacious Eye” Makes Minneapolis One of the Top Centers for Art from Japan

VITA.MN

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts unveils a show of recently acquired Japanese art from the Clark Collection.

MINNESOTA---Crouching beside an 800-year-old Japanese sculpture of a Buddhist god astride a kneeling bull, curator Andreas Marks slipped a sheet of paper under the bull’s hind quarters. It slid across the polished wooden base until it stopped just shy of the animal’s firmly planted back hoofs. The paper’s easy flow made clear that the beast is not lying down but is poised to leap up and carry the god into his fight against evil. “Bill Clark pointed that out to me when I first met him back in 2008,” said Marks, who heads the Minneapolis Institute of Arts’ new Clark Collections of Japanese Art. With the addition of the Clark Collections, the MIA’s Japanese holdings rival those of the country’s top museums. [link]

Minneapolis Institute of Arts: "The Audacious Eye: Japanese Art from the Clark Collections" (Ends January 12); 2400 Third Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN; (888) MIA ARTS (642-2787) (Toll Free); artsmia.org