In conjunction with the Timken Museum of Art, SDMA is presenting a major exhibition featuring the work of internationally recognized Japanese textile artist and kimono designer, Itchiku Kubota (1917–2003). Kubota used a variety of traditional techniques and unique personal innovations to create shimmering, abstract landscapes through a complex layering of dyes and inks on monumentally-scaled kimono. Included in the exhibition are a selection of kimono from his Mt. Fuji series—a popular subject in the arts of Japan—presented as three views of Japan’s most famous mountain at different times of day. The centerpiece of the exhibition and Kubota’s life work is Symphony of Light, a dramatic 30-piece presentation of kimono placed side-by-side depicting the four seasons. The subtle changes of color and the quality of light achieved through skillful dyeing and the clever exploitation of the light-reflective properties of silk make this a breath-taking installation. In addition, a selection of Kubota’s individual works will round out the exhibition.

Tour: San Diego Museum of Art, November 1, 2008–January 4, 2009; Canton Museum of Art, February 8–April 26, 2009

This unique display features several light-emitting luminous sculptures from SDMA’s collection and local private collections. The works will fill the exhibition space with various warm glowing lights, a central physical and symbolic aspect of the works. The sculptures vary from metaphors for everyday objects, such as tables and nightlights, to surfaces covered in layers of photographs that touch upon social and political topics.

Black Womanhood is the first major exhibition to explore the direct relationship between historic and contemporary representations of the black female body as they have been expressed in both African and Western arts. The exhibition presents prints, photographs, paintings, sculpture, video, and installations about black womanhood. Approximately 95 works of art reveal how ideologies and realities of race, gender, identity, and sexuality have been constructed, critiqued, and transformed through visual representations of the black female body from the 19th century to the present. The exhibition will be organized according to three thematic areas—the traditional African, the colonial Western, and the contemporary global—each with its own sub-narratives juxtaposing Africa and the West, male and female, historic and contemporary, and subject and object. As such this exhibition will provide a truly unique and in-depth look at how ideologies of black womanhood have been variously created through images of the female body.

Tour: Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College, April 1–August 10, 2008; Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley College, September 17–December 10, 2008; San Diego Museum of Art, January 31–April 26, 2009

Organized by SDMA, this exhibition features approximately 70 artworks that represent ancient Oceanic traditions from Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. The works on view come from public and private collections and include a variety of three-dimensional objects full of cultural and social meaning that still function within Oceanic cultures today. Included are elaborate, hand-carved sculptures representing ancestors and gods, jewelry, weapons, cooking tools, and more.

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