4,000 years of Southeast Asian Art at the Honolulu Academy of Arts

The Honolulu Academy of Arts is hosting an exhibition on Four Thousand Years of Southeast Asian Art until January 9. The Honolulu Star-Advertiser has a review of the exhibition, but the article misspells William Solheim’s name.

Treasures uncovered
Honolulu Star-Advertiser, 21 November 2010

When considering the Honolulu Academy of Arts’ Asian collection, most folks would think of ukiyo-e first, then Chinese and other Japanese art, says Asian art curator Shawn Eichman.

The museum’s current show, “Four Thousand Years of Southeast Asian Art,” could alter that. As with other exhibits in the past couple of years, this one features a collection from Academy vaults — and what treasure troves the Southeast Asian repositories have turned out to be.

Eichman aimed to view the entire collection of 1,700 pieces, but several months and almost 700 works later, “three areas of strength started to emerge,” he says.

“The selection and organization came from the collection itself. As I went through the collection, it really spoke of its own strengths.”

The first was works from the Ban Chiang culture, the Bronze Age of Thailand, featuring bronze and ceramic pieces from as far back as 5,000 years ago. Pieces from the era constitute the first of three sections in the exhibit.

The discovery of the culture itself is directly tied to University of Hawaii archaeologist Wilhelm Solheim, who unearthed Ban Chiang artifacts in 1966 while performing excavations. “It made quite a splash,” says Eichman.