PAM Events

Traditionally, Japanese ceramics emphasize the beauty of nature. Ceramic forms are often unadorned to highlight each vessel’s imperfections, simple elegance, and quiet balance. The clay, artist, and firing process all spontaneously influence the aesthetic of each ceramic created. Today, modern ceramic artists maintain many of these traditional elements while also incorporating modern innovations. Technological improvements to glazes, kilns, and clay refinement allow for a fresh new interpretation of the aesthetics of Japanese ceramics.

Sikhism and military history are closely intertwined. Beginning with the Sixth Guru Hargobind (1606-1644), the concept of temporal power combined with spiritual guidance took root as this faith sought freedom of worship against discriminatory policies in India at that time. The Tenth Guru Gobind Singh (1675-1708) stated, “When all efforts to restore peace prove useless and no words avail, lawful is the flash of steel, it is right to draw the sword.” The order of the Khalsa, once formalized, has prevailed to the present time as a political and a religious institution.

Dive into the always inventive, often surprising Catholic imagery of the Virgin Mary and the archangels from 17th- and 18th-century colonial Latin America.

In 2012, photographer Betsy Schneider embarked on a project to explore the experience of being thirteen. Traveling around the United States, the Guggenheim grant recipient chronicled the lives of 250 13-year-olds, creating still portraits and video documentation of each. “I began with my daughter, her friends and other children I already knew. From there I reached out through my own social networks, schools, clubs and other organizations,” says Schneider.  The resulting body of work creates a rich portrait of a group of Americans whose lives began at the turn of the millennium and who are coming of age now.

The resulting exhibition includes approximately 20 large photographic prints, a 60-minute film running continuously, and an archive where visitors can view pictures of each of the 13-year-olds, along with some of their statements. The portraits illustrate how differently the age of 13 can appear. Some subjects exude confidence while others practically shrink from the camera.  Some 13-year-olds look mature enough to be mistaken for young college students, while others dwell in childlike bodies.  Some of the 13-year-olds convey a self-possessed clarity and appear motivated about the future while others appear comfortably ensconced in the current moment.  The subjects’ words heighten these disparities, and further suggest that the 250 portraits represent 250 distinctly unique people, a group about whom it would be hard to generalize or make assumptions.

This exhibit will showcase more than 20 works on paper, all drawn from the Museum’s collection, by neo-Dada artists Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns that present a lesser-known side of their artistic practices. These rare works detail a fascinating visual conversation between two of modern art’s most influential creators, evident in their comparable use of collage and mixed media in service of multiple, often uncertain, meanings.

Teotihuacan was the first, largest, and most influential metropolis on the American continent. In its heyday between 100 B.C. and 650 A.D., the city encompassed an area of 20 square kilometers with a population of more than 150,000. Both the inhabitants of Teotihuacan, its original name, and why the city was abandoned around 650 A.D. are still unknown. When the Aztecs, coming from the north in the first half of the 14th century, discovered its abandoned ruins on the Mexican Central Plateau, they named it Teotihuacan, the place where gods were born, and used it as the setting for their own creation myth.

Teotihuacan: City of Water, City of Fire is a major traveling exhibition organized by the de Young Museum in San Francisco in collaboration with the National Institute of Anthropology and History of Mexico. With more than 250 outstanding objects from the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, as well as important objects borrowed from North American institutions, Teotihuacan: City of Water, City of Fire will provide a comprehensive insight into the art, everyday life, and religion of Teotihuacan, and its influence on other regions of Mexico. The exhibition will explore the archaeological history of the city through sculptures, friezes and murals; domestic objects including vessels and figures, stone carvings, masks, statues of gods and representations of animals; and extraordinary objects crafted out of precious materials including jade, obsidian, greenstone, and onyx.