A tour of the Crow: present and future

BENNGUYEN Managing Editor

The Crow Museum of Asian Art was always a location that students could go to destress and appreciate contemporary and historic Asian art. But this semester, the Crow Museum is coming to UTD!

The Crow Museum of Asian Art is a long-standing museum in the downtown Dallas Arts District that features a large collection of Asian art and holds exhibitions of different contemporary Asian artists. Currently, the museum has three exhibitions from the permanent collection and two visiting exhibitions, “Divine Spark” by Kana Harada and “Born of Fire,” a collection of pottery from contemporary female artists. Museum Curator Jacqueline Chao said that the exhibitions are generally planned several months and sometimes even a few years in advance.

“When we’re working with a visiting artist or contemporary artists, sometimes the works are not ready yet, or we want to preplan ahead so they can prepare something new,” Chao said. “For Kana, she made a lot of these works during 2020; she knew the show was happening and it was an opportunity for her to just feel totally creative and inspired.”

“She refers to this divine spark as this power and this energy everyone has to keep going, the light that it takes and the power and energy it takes to create. And so it’s constantly infinite. It’s constantly refreshing.” – Museum

Curator Jacqueline Chao, on the inspiration for “Divine Spark”

But in the upcoming semester, these exhibitions won’t be exclusively shown in the downtown Dallas Arts District. Museum Director Amy Hofland said that the Crow will be bringing contemporary exhibitions to UTD during the upcoming semester, along with other workshops and events.

“In this third fall [since the Crow became affiliated with UTD in 2019], we will be rolling out the Crow on campus, so we’re anticipating some programs on campus,

“They had to probably use a fret saw or something, and they had to cut each single piece and then lay it out perfectly. And then you gotta put the clear lacquer on it, and then you gotta wait 36 or 72 hours, and then you gotta put more, so you have to really think about those steps.” - Museum Curator Jacqueline Chao, on the difficulties of Lacquer Art.

“This is a piece that she also created during the pandemic called ‘Home Sweet Home’. And I think it very much speaks to that time period of quarantine when everyone’s indoors, but also the joy that can be found from the indoors, you know, bringing the outside in.” - Museum Curator Jacqueline Chao, on “Home Sweet Home”