As a museum visitor, have you ever wondered if your views are used in the process of developing programming? How exactly does the museum know what the community wants to learn and see? Perhaps it’s the luck of the draw or perhaps it’s the result of something called an audience researcher.

Gleaned from a prized and relatively unknown group of objects in the museum’s wide-ranging Asian collection, this exhibition of Kalighat paintings will allow visitors an opportunity to view these rarely displayed Indian paintings, considered to be the beginning of modernism in Indian art.

View this video perspective from guest curator Deepak Sarma that reviews a painting of the goddess Kali, the namesake for the city Kalighat (Calcutta).

Seunghye Sun, associate curator of Japanese and Korean art, shares a work from our collection. The Lure of Painted Poetry: Japanese and Korean Art, the first in-depth comparison of the achievements of Korea and Japan from the late 14th century, consists of some 100 examples from the museum’s permanent collection—many that have never been shown since the 1990s.

By Jim Engelmann
Exhibition Designer

Designing an exhibition is all about the stuff – the cases, the walls, the graphics, the labels, the lights, and most of all the works of art – the things that people come here to look at. What are they? How many? How big? When will they be here? Are they fragile? Do these belong together or apart? … on and on and on.

Holiday season is in the air. Ready to start your year-end shopping? Check the exhibition boutique, the museum store—online or in person—to find creative and educational gift ideas for all ages. We selected a sample of goods currently available (when indicated, prices do not include tax or shipping):

Read all about it.

The exhibition, Kim Beom: Objects Being Taught They Are Nothing But Tools , offers a sensitive critique of Kim Beom’s Korean heritage and culture. It is the first exhibition of the artist by a United States museum. In this blog, we share a few photos of the artist’s work in progress that offer insight into the exhibition’s interest and aims.

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The Ingalls Library and Archives staff has organized a small display of photographs, letters, and newspaper clippings related to the museum’s acquisitions of objects from the world-renowned Guelph Treasure in 1930. This display will remain on view in the library’s reference area through Friday, December 3, 2010, free and open to the public.