Once a strategic trading post that channeled the flow of riches and ideas among countries situated along the South China Sea and places as far away as India and Rome, Viet Nam has a fascinating history and an artistic heritage to match it. This lavishly produced catalogue will help introduce English-speaking audiences to Viet Nam’s amazing body of artwork, ranging from the first millennium B.C. to the 18th century.
The authors begin by discussing, for example, the elegant burial jars, iron axes, bronze artifacts, and jewelry of the early Sa Huynh culture; the bronze ritual drums of the Dong Son; and the jeweled gold pieces, excavated from the walled center of Oc Eo in the kingdom of Fu Nan. New scholarship investigates the trade in gold and Chinese ceramics between Cham and the Philippine kingdom of Butuan. The final section is devoted to art from Hoi An, once a major international port. Of note are the ceramic wares produced in northern and central Viet Nam from the 16th to 18th century.

Arts of Ancient Viet Nam: From River Plain to Open Sea (Museum of Fine Arts)

Tingley, Nancy

Reference

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

According to tradition, Shakyamuni Buddha (Indian, c. 563-483 BC) was a prince who attained enlightenment and whose teachings gave birth to Buddhism. Western audiences today recognize certain iconographic elements--distended earlobes, monk's robes, a certain coiffure--as belonging to the buddha. Yet depictions vary widely across countries and cultures, revealing regional differences in religious belief. For example, the earliest buddha images, from Pakistan, depict the narrative of the Enlightened One's life, whereas later images from Thailand portray a crowned and bejeweled buddha. This great variety of interpretations represents a rich inheritance that enhances our understanding of the cultures that created such devotional objects. In this book, Nancy Tingley explores the breadth of Buddhist belief as elucidated through the many depictions of buddhas, from the first millennium to modern times.

Buddhas

Religion & Spirituality

Buddhism

Pomegranate

When the alluring, eleventh-century Cambodian stone head of Radha, consort to Krishna, shows up at the Searles Museum, young curator Jenna Murphy doesn’t suspect that it will lead her to a murder. Asian art is her bailiwick, not criminal investigation, and her immediate concern is simply figuring out whether the head is one famously stolen from its body, or a fake.
When a second decapitation happens—this time of an art collector, not a statue—Jenna finds herself drawn into a different kind of mystery, and the stakes are life or death. It turns out that the same talents for research and for unraveling puzzles—the bread and butter of an art historian—have perfectly equipped her to solve crimes. She’s certain the sculpture provides clues to help her solve the case, which takes her to Thailand and Cambodia. But the collectors, dealers, and con artists of the Bangkok art world only compound her questions.
A Head in Cambodia is the fiction debut of noted Asian art expert Nancy Tingley. Readers will delight in the rarified world of collecting, as well as getting to know Jenna, an intrepid and shrewd observer who will easily find her place among V.I. Warshawski, Kinsey Milhone, and other great female sleuths.

A Head in Cambodia: A Jenna Murphy Mystery (Jenna Murphy Mysteries)

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Mystery

SWALLOW PRESS+

Intrepid young curator-turned-private eye Jenna Murphy—whom readers first met in A Head in Cambodia—goes to the tourist town of Ubud to study early twentieth-century Balinese painting. But her first discovery when she arrives in Indonesia is the speared body of expat artist Flip Hendricks. She soon is working with an old friend, a detective for the Ubud police force, to seek the killer. Jenna suspects the motive for the killing has to do with Flip’s paintings. Detective Wayan Tyo is not so sure. Is Jenna right, or are there other forces at work in this paradise overrun with tourists? The threats to Jenna’s safety pile up, until she can no longer deny that her life is in danger. Her entanglement with various men only clouds her judgment and complicates the situation. As she did in the first Jenna Murphy book, in A Death in Bali, Nancy Tingley draws on her extensive experience as a scholar of Asian art to bring the armchair traveler an immersive, inside view of the art world.

A Death in Bali: A Jenna Murphy Mystery (Jenna Murphy Mysteries)

In the 1950s and 1960s, Doris Duke was one of the few Western collectors pursuing Thai artworks, and in 1961 she established the Foundation for Southeast Asian Art and Culture to increase Western recognition and appreciation of these works. By 1964 Miss Duke had acquired roughly 2,000 diverse pieces of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century art primarily from Thailand, Burma, and Laos, ranging from textiles, household furnishings, and jewelry to teak houses and massive statues. She began to display her collection in 1972 at Duke Farms, her large New Jersey estate, and she continued to travel and collect widely in Southeast Asia throughout that decade. Most of the work found in SEAAC is from Thailand, and Doris Duke strongly believed in the preservation of Thai art as a reflection of the people and culture from which it emerged. She worked for much of her life toward finding an effective way to share her knowledge and enthusiasm. Doris Duke: The Southeast Asian Art Collection honors her wish to bring greater public and scholarly attention to the excellent works she gathered. In addition, this beautiful book acknowledges the collection as an impressive whole before its dispersion to several major museums.

Tingley: Doris Duke, SouthEastern Art Collection

Arts & Photography

History & Criticism

Doris Duke Charitable Foundation

The Kathmandu Valley is the most populated region of Nepal, and the Newar, probable descendants of the Kirati who settled in the Valley in the first millennium BCE, have for centuries created the art featured in Celestial Realms. In additin to Hindu and Buddhist sculpture and paintings, tribal works from the middle hill region are also included, providing a contrast with Newar production.

Celestial Realms: The Art of Nepal from California Collections

Crocker art museum

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