Location: Upper Level Galleries
November 6, 2026–April 3, 2027
Guest curated by Huixian Dong, Lecturer of Art, Washburn University
This exhibition presents works from the Mulvane Art Museum's collection of Asian art. Staging culture(s) is never neutral. Culture is performed, culture is interpreted, and culture is (re)imagined. Inspired by this idea, Staging Asia unfolds in three acts:
“Picturing the Self” gathers works in which Asian artists depict their own worlds: daily life, landscape, and the tools of living, carrying forward the heritage of local art techniques and media.
“Returning Gaze” stages an exchange of looking. Porcelain made for Western collectors reveals how Qing dynasty aesthetics were perceived and imagined from afar, and how makers and artists, in crafting that image, learned to navigate themselves through foreign eyes. With the arrival of modernization and the techniques of Western industrialization, Japanese printmakers began to perceive and imagine Americans and Europeans in turn. When the observed became observers, a counter-narrative gradually formed to the dominant story of East meeting West.
“Speaking Nearby” borrows its title from theorist Trinh T. Minh-ha, who proposed speaking nearby rather than speaking about. Asian diaspora artists speak nearby in-betweenness, neither seizing nor claiming, but reflecting on the self and re-imagining home, both the one left behind and the one still being made.
Akio Takamori, Sitting Monkey (detail) from Monkey Business, 2011, lithograph. Mulvane Art Museum, Washburn University.
