iThe Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical GardensSan Marino
the eight directions of the wind: Edmund de Waal at The Huntington
This exhibition has ended.
Yearlong exhibition of site-specific installations by British artist Edmund de Waal across the Huntington Art Gallery, Chinese Garden, and Japanese Garden.
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In the Huntington Art Gallery's dining room, 18th-century Meissen plates are mended with gold. The Nazis looted them and Allied bombing of Dresden damaged them, and the kintsugi repair, by Maiko Tsutsumi, marks the breaks instead of hiding them.
The show is three installations in three places, so you walk. In the gallery, a table topped with porcelain slip and gold holds a library of exile poetry, and Kilkenny stone benches stand in the marble hall. In the Chinese Garden's Studio for Lodging the Mind, shards and vessels from China, Korea, Russia, Germany, Britain and America sit beside de Waal's own. At the Japanese Garden's Marsh Tea House, a stone bench faces white shoji doors and black porcelain vessels in shadow. After a Saturday on the 210, that bench is a hard offer to refuse.
It closes on 26 October. Entry is included with general admission ($29 Monday to Thursday, $34 at weekends), reservations are required Friday to Sunday, and the Huntington is closed on Tuesdays.
Editor's pick
Edmund de Waal, the potter who wrote The Hare with Amber Eyes, placed new work across the Huntington's Art Gallery, Chinese Garden and Japanese Garden. The porcelain sits among pavilions and ponds, so the walk between is part of it.
Look for
The kintsugi Meissen plates
Restored 18th-century plates in the gallery's dining room, their breaks filled with urushi lacquer and powdered gold, silver or platinum.
The exile poetry table
In the Small Library, books of poetry by exiles sit inside a table of porcelain slip and gold, with a text on sanctuary written into its top.
The Wedgwood shards vitrine
On the gallery's second floor, a new vitrine of Wedgwood shards sits among the Huntington's Sèvres porcelain.
A thousand years of porcelain
In the Studio for Lodging the Mind, shards and whole vessels from several continents are paired with de Waal's own pieces.
The Marsh Tea House vessels
Seen through white shoji doors from a Kilkenny stone bench, two installations of black porcelain vessels stand in the shadows.
Good for
- Going Solo
- Nerding Out
- Out-Of-Town Guests
Also at The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens
On now nearby
Image credits
4
- The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical GardensAaron Logan / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 1.0
- Sculpted Portraits from Ancient Egypt© The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved
- Charles Ross: Spectrum 14Courtesy of Getty Center
- The Egyptian Book of the DeadCourtesy of Getty Villa