Happy Year of the Monkey!

Happy Year of the Monkey! To help contribute to the wealth of monkey images online for this Lunar New Year here is the museum’s 10th-13th century Chinese sculpture, Guanyin Seated in a Grotto, depicting the Monkey King story. The Monkey King is a mischievous and highly popular character in China ever since the publication of the classic novel Journey to the West in the 1590s in which he plays the protagonist.

Based on a real pilgrimage in the early 600s by a Chinese Buddhist monk named Xuanzang, who travelled to India to find and bring back Buddhist scriptures, in Journey to the West the Monkey King accompanies Xuanzang on his quest. The top portion of this sculpture depicts the Monkey King with the monk and a horse. Below them the Buddhist deity of compassion, Guanyin, sits atop her lotus throne encircled by a dragon. Guanyin served as their guardian on the trip, often offering divine intervention.

This sculpture, one of the earliest depictions of the tale of the Monkey King made centuries before it became a popular novel, has also recently inspired new research. After viewing WAM’s Guanyin Seated in a Grotto, Dr. Ji Hao, a professor of Chinese language and literature at the College of the Holy Cross, began studying other artistic representations of the Monkey King story. We look forward to learning more about this rich piece from his findings.

Welcome in the Year of the Monkey by looking for this Monkey King-inspired piece currently on view during your next visit to WAM.

Above: Guanyin Seated in a Grotto, late Song Dynasty (960-1279), granite, greenish color, 59.7 cm (23 1/2 in.), Gift of Stephan Bourgeois, 1933.9

See more Chinese Art

- Vivian Li, Assistant Curator, Asian Art

Calling all Emily the Strange Fans!

Rob Reger

To help kickoff WAM's Meow exhibition we are excited to announce that Friday, February 19 will be Emily the Strange Day at the Museum. The exhibit Rob Reger's Emily the Strange and her Four Bad Kitties is the first of many cat-inspired exhibits that are all part of the Meow project. While the full exhibition opens on Friday, May 20, Emily and her four kitties (Mystery, Miles, NeeChee, and Sabbath) will be taking over Helmutt's House starting February 10th.

On Emily the Strange Day on Friday, February 19, please join us for special Emily the Strange themed art activities, story time, and more. Free admission to the Museum will be granted for any visitors who come dressed as Emily… or her cats.

Click here to learn more about Meow

Click here to learn more about the artist Rob Reger and his character Emily the Strange in his interview with WAM's Director of Audience Engagement Adam Rozan.

- KATrina Stacy, Associate Curator of Education

Calling all Homeschool Families & Groups!

Join us for our new Homeschool Wednesdays at WAM. Make the Museum part of your homeschool studies with this quarterly program designed to complement home-based learning for ages 5 and up. Through a combination of tours and Gallery/Studio workshops, we offer a variety of educational and interactive—and fun!—options depending on your interests and curriculum.

Participants will discover the Ancient World, explore the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, learn more about Early American History, or become familiar with WAM through a Museum Highlights Package. The Gallery/Studio workshops feature painting, clay pottery, portraits, illuminated letters, and aluminum tooling.

Our upcoming Homeschool Wednesdays are scheduled for March 23 and May 11. To schedule your visit, contact Jan Ewick at 508-793-4338 or janewick@worcesterart.org or Jesse Rives at 508-793-4335 or jesserives@worcesterart.org. Please reserve your spot at least three weeks in advance.

Click here to learn more about the Homeschool Wednesdays tours, Gallery/Studio Workshops, the Museum Highlights Package, and associated costs for these field trips.

We hope to see you and your homeschool group at the Museum for Homeschool Wednesdays!

- Jesse Rives, Education Coordinator

Museum Selfie Day

What’s so great about the museum selfie?

Everything! While the question may be rhetorical, the answer is certainly not. What I love about museum selfies is that these photographs celebrate one’s museum visit and champion the idea of play and discovery across our institution. The act of taking selfies encourages all visitors to become explorers inside our galleries and museum spaces, as they search out the artworks that appeal to them and inspire their best photographs. This creative investigation of our galleries breathes new life and imagination into the museum experience.

Visiting a museum is a chance to dream and reflect, to learn and explore our past and present, and to connect with family and friends. No two museums are alike and no two museum visits are the same. Some museum visitors come to talk and socialize, others come to sketch. Some visitors read all the labels, while others swear by the audio tours. There is no one right or wrong way to visit a museum. Taking photographs inside galleries appeals to many visitors, but it’s not for everyone. And that’s OK, too.

Please join us in celebrating the experience of the museum selfie, and visit on Wednesday, January 20 to celebrate Museum Selfie Day. Share your pictures, and remember to include #MuseumSelfie and @worcesterart with your photos.

To help you with this experience, we’ve prepared some tips for smart and helpful strategies for taking photographs inside the museum. Check out those tips here.

- Adam Rozan, Director of Audience Engagement

p.s. Special thanks to the Royal Ontario Museum for help in creating our selfie guidelines, and to Mar Dixon for championing Museum Selfie Day.

Art Carts: Family Fun

Curious about art?

There are many centuries of art to discover here at WAM. Our new Art Carts: Family Fun activities take art, as well as the cultures and history of that art, and offer a new way of seeing and experiencing it. From discovering how the Hunt Mosaic was made and how it got to WAM to looking at shards of pottery and discovering the puzzle that real world archaeologists face every day, there’s so much to explore. Look at Early America portraits, try on the clothes they wore, and discover how they lived. Study Roman faces to discover gods and emperors and how, sometimes, they were the same. Or, learn to write like an Egyptian. There are many more opportunities to interact with art and the past – or even the present. Led by our knowledgeable—and fun—educators, these lively gallery get-togethers are for all ages!

Art Carts are located around the Museum. Ask at our Information Desks for more on times and locations or see our website.

Art Cart: Family Fun Hours

Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays: 1-2pm and 2:30-3:30pm

Saturdays and Sundays: 2:30-3:30pm

Learn more about Art Carts

- Neal Bourbeau, Knights Education Programming Coordinator

Lifetime Achievement Award - Dr. Jeffrey L. Forgeng

I was surprised and honored this week to learn that I have been selected for a Lifetime Achievement Award as part of the 2015 HEMA Scholar Awards. I’ve been researching Historical European Martial Arts since about 1990, before the field truly came into being. My work on Royal Armouries Manuscript I.33, the oldest surviving swordfighting treatise, played a big part in my appointment as Paul S. Morgan Curator at the Higgins Armory in 1999. Since then I’ve seen HEMA burgeon into a major international phenomenon—I can recognize at least four different countries on the panel responsible for the awards. Our world-class historical combat program at the Armory was among my proudest achievements during my time there, and I’m happy to say that we are continuing to build on that legacy in the Higgins Collection’s new home here at the Worcester Art Museum. Swordplay classes are currently offered here every weekend, and this summer we will offer a rare opportunity for visitors to see both an original copy of Joachim Meyer’s combat treatise of 1570, and a fencing longsword of the type illustrated in Meyer’s book.

Learn more about Jeppson Idea Lab: The Art of Combat
Browse The John Woodman Higgins Collection online
Learn more about the 2015 HEMA Scholar Awards

- Jeffrey L. Forgeng, Curator of Arms & Armor and Medieval Art

Nature Unfolded: Korean Art from the Collection

Every few months the display of Asian art works on paper in the Arts of Japan Gallery has to rotate out with new works to preserve the quality of ink, colors, and paper of such light sensitive pieces. Working together with the museum’s dedicated team of conservators, exhibition designers, and art handlers, we recently completed the new installation featuring two outstanding works of Korean art from the collection, the eighteenth-century Moon Jar and the early nineteenth-century screen ink painting, Grapevine, by Choe Sokhwan. The spontaneous virtuosity of the brush that dances across the eight panels of the screen complements the quiet simplicity of the pure white moon jar. Yet don’t forget to also look closely and notice the moon jar’s imperfections, such as its asymmetrical form and the slightly bulging seam in the middle that were created during production. Rather than trying to conceal such “imperfections,” these characteristics are highly-prized for the elegant naturalness they add to the moon jar. Enjoy these new works on view on your next visit to WAM!

Learn more about Nature Unfolded: Korean Art from the Collection

- Vivian Li, Assistant Curator, Asian Art