The museum is closed on Thursday, Nov. 16 for a private event.
Sep 16, 2019
Download a PDF of this Press Release: Lost at Sea – Art Recovered from Shipwrecks
San Francisco, September 16, 2019 — A fierce three-headed serpent and a mysterious female deity were among the nearly two dozen 12th-century stone sculptures from Central Vietnam that lay unseen at the bottom of the Arabian Sea for nearly 120 years. Almost 5,000 miles away in the South China Sea, blue-and-white ceramic bowls, plates and jars rested in the hold of a sunken ship off the coast of Vietnam for more than five centuries. Preserved like time capsules under the seas, these shipwrecks contained artworks that were excavated in the 1990s by marine archaeologists, sold at auction, purchased by individual collectors and then donated to the museum.
From Nov. 26 2019-Mar. 22, 2020, Lost at Sea: Art Recovered from Shipwrecks offers visitors a chance to go behind the scenes and trace the pathways of these objects, from Vietnam to the ocean floor to San Francisco. “We want our audiences to ask questions about how artworks enter museum collections,” says Natasha Reichle, exhibition organizer and Asian Art Museum assistant curator of Southeast Asian art.
Lost at Sea: Art Recovered from Shipwrecks is organized by the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. Presentation is made possible with the generous support of Glenn Vinson and Claire Vinson.
Sustained support generously provided by the following endowed funds:
Akiko Yamazaki and Jerry Yang Endowment Fund for Exhibitions