PHOENIX (March 9, 2026) –Phoenix Art Museum announces the acquisition of Reflection Between Flashes (2023) by Vietnam-based artist Tuan Andrew Nguyen. The work is the latest purchased by the Museum with funds from Men’s Arts Council and the first by Nguyen acquired into the Museum’s collection of more than 21,000 objects. Nguyen, whose work was recently presented in a solo exhibition at James Cohan in New York City, is internationally renowned for his video and sculpture that examine colonial histories and supernaturalism by tapping into inherited stories and counter-memory. His work Reflection Between Flashes is inspired by the kinetic works of Alexander Calder but is cast from salvaged, unexploded munitions recovered in Central Vietnam. The mobile, which expands representation of contemporary Southeast Asian artists in the Museum’s collection, will be on view at the Museum beginning April 25.

“The kinetic work of Tuan Andrew Nguyen is an extraordinary addition to the PhxArt Collection,” said Jeremy Mikolajczak, the Museum’s Sybil Harrington Director and CEO. “Nguyen’s work regularly unearths stories of resilience, community, and regeneration, reminding us all of memories that objects and materials can hold and how artists transform them to be seen and experienced in new ways. We are deeply grateful to Men’s Arts Council for supporting the acquisition of this work, and we look forward to sharing it with our visitors.”

Born in Saigon and now based in Ho Chi Minh City, Nguyen and his family emigrated in 1979 as refugees to the United States. In 1999, he graduated from the fine-arts program at University of California, Irvine, and in 2004 earned his Master of Fine Arts from the California Institute of the Arts. Nguyen is a co-founder and former board member of Sàn Art and was a founding member of The Propeller Group whose work was exhibited at PhxArt in 2017.

Nguyen’s most recent sculptures are made from unexploded ordnance (UXO) recovered in the Quang Trị region of central Vietnam, the site of the largest aerial bombardment in history. Reflection Between Flashes features 12 plate bells, seven of which are cast from salvaged artillery shell brass, while the remaining five are stainless steel incorporating salvaged bomb metal. The elegant form of the monumental hanging mobile stands in stark contrast to the brutal origins of the materials used to create it. This work moves with the flow of air and vibrations of sound in the gallery space, creating a naturally shifting play of abstract spatial relationships that suggest a state of perpetual change. Nguyen worked with a sound healer to tune the work to a series of pitches centered around 432 Hz, a frequency associated with healing energies and the vibration of the cosmos.

“Much of Nguyen’s recent work focuses on creating harmony where there has been destruction and loss.” said Colin Pearson, the Museum’s curator of Asian art. “Reflections Between Flashes continues this thread and embodies his concept of ‘material reincarnation’ in a mobile that produces visual and musical harmony from the detritus of the war in Vietnam. Guests will witness the sculpture slowly shift and rotate, activated by the invisible movement of air, while contemplating the delicate balance that suspends each piece. Nguyen’s use of melted bomb and artillery shells draws our attention to the frightening origin of the metal, and to the salvage workers in northern Vietnam who still perform the dangerous work of harvesting unexploded ordnance five decades after the end of the war. My hope is that people will both appreciate the beauty of Reflections Between Flashes and reflect on the long aftereffects that warfare has on the people and places involved.”

Nguyen was recently announced as a 2025 recipient of the MacArthur Foundation’s “Genius Grant”, and he was chosen for a prestigious High Line Plinth commission for a monumental sculpture in New York City’s High Line park. Nguyen has had major solo presentations at the New Museum, New York; Fondació Joan Miró, Barcelona; Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town, South Africa; and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC. His work is in the permanent collections of several distinguished national and international museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago; Brooklyn Museum; Carré d’Art – Musée d’art contemporain de Nîmes, France; Dallas Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Taguchi Art Collection, Japan; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and now, Phoenix Art Museum.

“We are incredibly proud to support the acquisition of Tuan Andrew Nguyen’s powerful sculpture for the Phoenix Art Museum collection,” said Sentari Minor, president, Men’s Arts Council. “This work speaks to transformation, resilience, and the enduring human capacity to create beauty from the remnants of conflict. By bringing Nguyen’s voice into the Museum’s Asian art holdings, we are expanding not only representation but also the depth and complexity of the stories told within the galleries. It’s important for our community to encounter contemporary works that challenge, reflect, and inspire—and this sculpture does exactly that.”

For more information about this latest acquisition, contact the Communications Office of Phoenix Art Museum at kaylee.weyrauch@phxart.org or press@phxart.org

About Phoenix Art Museum

Since 1959, Phoenix Art Museum (PhxArt) has engaged millions of visitors with the art and fashion of our region and world. Located in Phoenix’s Central Corridor, PhxArt creates spaces of exchange and belonging for all audiences through dynamic exhibitions, collections, and art experiences. Each year, more than 250,000 guests engage with critically acclaimed national and international exhibitions, as well as the Museum’s collection of more than 21,000 works of American and Western American, Asian, European, Latin American, modern, and contemporary art and fashion. The Museum also presents vibrant photography exhibitions made possible through the Museum’s landmark partnership with the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson and is home to The Gene and Cathy Lemon Art Research Library, The Thorne Miniature Rooms, The Ullman Center for the Art of Philip C. Curtis, and Arizona Costume Institute (ACI). For the community, PhxArt hosts lectures, live performances, outstanding examples of global cinema, arts-education workshops, family-focused programs, and more. To learn more about Phoenix Art Museum, visit phxart.org, or call 602.257.1880. 

About Tuan Andrew Nguyen

Tuan Andrew Nguyen (b. 1976, Saigon, Vietnam) creates work that explores the power of storytelling through video and sculpture. His projects are based on extensive research and community engagement, tapping into inherited histories and counter-memory. Nguyen extracts and re-works dominant, oftentimes colonial histories and supernaturalisms into imaginative vignettes. Fact and fiction are interwoven in his poetic narratives that span time and place.

Now based in Ho Chi Minh City, Nguyen has had major solo presentations at the New Museum, New York, NY (2023); Fondació Joan Miró, Barcelona, Spain (2024); Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town, South Africa (2024) and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC (2024). His videos and films have been included in major international festivals, biennials, and exhibitions including Prospect.6, New Orleans, LA (2024); the 12th Berlin Biennale, Berlin, Germany (2022); Manifesta 14, Prishtina, Kosovo (2022); Aichi Triennale, Aichi Prefecture, Japan (2022); Biennale de Dakar, Dakar, Senegal (2022); Asian Art Biennial, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Tapei, Taiwan (2021); Manifesta 13, Marseille, France (2020); Sharjah Architecture Triennial, Sharjah, UAE (2019); SOFT POWER, SFMoMA, San Francisco, CA (2019); the 2019 Sharjah Biennial, Sharjah, UAE (2019); 2017 Whitney Biennial, New York, NY (2017); the 55th International Short Film Festival, Oberhausen, Germany (2009); 8th NHK Asian Film Festival, Tokyo, Japan (2007); 18th Singapore International Film Festival (2005) and 4th Bangkok Experimental Film Festival, Bangkok, Thailand (2005). Nguyen has received numerous awards, including the 2023 Joan Miró Prize.

His work is included in the permanent collections of institutions including the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; Carré d’Art – Musée d’art contemporain de Nîmes, France; Centre national des arts plastiques (CNAP), Paris, France; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX; Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, IA; Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates; Honolulu Museum of Art, Honolulu, HI; Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco, CA; Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Museum MACAN, Jakarta, Indonesia; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO; Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, NV; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ; Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA), Brisbane, Australia; Singapore Art Museum, Singapore; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Taguchi Art Collection, Japan; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, and the Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA.

About Men’s Arts Council

The Men’s Arts Council (MAC) of Phoenix Art Museum, founded in 1967, is a 501(c)3, non-profit organization that supports the Museum’s programs and activities through its unique events such as the Copperstate 1000 and the Copperstate Overland, a vintage off-road rally. The Men’s Arts Council’s efforts enable the organization to make annual contributions to Phoenix Art Museum’s operating budget and financially sponsor exhibitions. For more information, visit https://mensartscouncil.com/.

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PHOENIX (July 2, 2025) – Phoenix Art Museum (PhxArt) announces the appointment of two new curators: Colin Pearson as the institution’s Curator for Asian Art and Dr. JoAnna Reyes as its new Adjunct Curator for Art of the Americas. Reyes’ role is a collaborative appointment between Phoenix Art Museum and the School of Art in Arizona State University’s (ASU) Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts. In their respective roles, Pearson will develop exhibitions that draw from and highlight the Museum’s expansive Asian art collection, and Reyes will curate exhibitions across the Museum’s American, Western American, Latin American, and Spanish Colonial art collections. Both Pearson and Reyes assume their roles effective immediately. 

“We are thrilled to welcome Colin Pearson and JoAnna Reyes to the outstanding curatorial team at Phoenix Art Museum,” said Jeremy Mikolajczak, the Museum’s Sybil Harrington Director and CEO. “Both Colin and JoAnna have deep expertise and significant experience within their respective fields and bring fresh, innovative perspectives to the presentation of the PhxArt Collection’s rich holdings. We are excited to see how their exhibitions engage and educate our audiences in new ways, reaffirming the Museum’s role as a space of belonging that reflects the breadth of experiences represented across our community.”

“I am both excited and humbled to be appointed as Phoenix Art Museum’s third curator of Asian art, and I look forward to sharing this incredibly rich collection with audiences in a variety of new ways,” said Pearson. “I feel passionately that the physical distance between Arizona and the places where these wonderful artworks originate does not need to be a barrier to the appreciation of their beauty. By approaching the collection with an open mind, I seek to help audiences discover what makes the artistic traditions of Asia distinct, highlight the intercultural exchanges that have always connected us, and make Asian art accessible and relevant for the diverse and family-oriented audiences here in the Valley of the Sun.”

“I am excited to join the curatorial team at Phoenix Art Museum and explore the Museum’s incredible collection of art from across the Americas,” said Reyes. “By taking a hemispheric approach, I hope to create exhibitions that highlight the migrations, exchanges, and shared stories that have shaped the region, with the goal of sparking new conversations and understanding of the art of the Americas.”

About Colin Pearson

Colin Pearson assumes his new role as PhxArt’s Curator of Asian Art, bringing over a decade of experience curating collections of Asian artworks, ceramics, craft items, musical instruments, and ethnographic artifacts, with expertise on the effects of maritime and Silk Road trade routes on the arts of Tibet, China, and India. He previously served as the Museum’s adjunct curator of Asian art since 2024, overseeing the refresh of the Art of Asia galleries and curating exhibitions such as Chardi Kala: Rising Above Adversity, a presentation of Sikh artworks exploring the concept of unwavering optimism in the face of hardship. This year, Pearson will serve as coordinating curator for the Museum’s presentation of Radical Clay: Contemporary Women Artists from Japan, organized by the Art Institute of Chicago, and lead curator for the exhibition Flowers of the Punjab: Textiles of India and Beyond, both opening in September 2025.

In addition to his work at PhxArt, Pearson has collaborated on curatorial projects at Arizona State University (ASU) and catalogued a collection of nearly 200 textiles, artworks, and ethnographic objects for ASU’s Center for Asian Research. From 2020 to 2022, Pearson served as a curator for the Zayed National Museum in the United Arab Emirates, cultivating and sharing his extensive knowledge of ceramics and other export goods traded along overland and maritime routes from China, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, and India. As a curator at the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix from 2009 to 2020, Pearson organized special exhibitions of custom-inlaid guitars and Chinese antiquities. He also expanded the institution’s collection of instruments and artifacts from Asia, Oceania, and the Middle East, as well as instruments from Europe and North America. 

Pearson has delivered public talks and lectures on a wide range of topics relating to Asian art, including the musical and artistic cultures of Asia, connoisseurship and classification schemes, and the global legacies of cultural interactions throughout history. He earned his Bachelor of Music at California State University, Long Beach and his Master of Arts in Ethnomusicology from the University of California at Riverside. He is currently working toward his PhD in Asian Art History at Arizona State University.

About Dr. JoAnna Reyes

Dr. JoAnna Reyes’s collaborative appointment as the Adjunct Curator for Art of the Americas at Phoenix Art Museum and Assistant Professor of Art History and Museum Studies at Arizona State University (ASU) further deepens the collaboration between the leading art museum in the Southwest and one of the largest comprehensive arts programs at a public research university in the U.S. In her new role at PhxArt, Reyes will curate exhibitions across the Museum’s American, Western American, Latin American, and Spanish Colonial art collections, expanding opportunities for audiences to consider connections across borders, time periods, and cultures.

Reyes’ first curatorial project at the Museum will be a collection installation in the institution’s newly renovated Art of the Americas and Europe galleries, which are re-opening in November 2025. Drawing from the Museum’s Spanish Colonial and Latin American art collections, Reyes will highlight the traditions and innovations in the viceregal art of Latin America, and how artists of the period drew inspiration from Asian art objects and prints from Northern Europe to create innovative, sophisticated, and nuanced works imbued with traditional Indigenous techniques, Catholic devotional imagery, and new iconographies invented to honor local saints and miracles. The installation will also showcase contemporary works that exemplify how Latin American artists today reference this period in their practices. 

In addition to her curatorial work, this fall Reyes will teach an ASU art history seminar, located in the Museum’s Education building. Reyes will use the PhxArt collection and new North Wing collection galleries to focus on a period between the 15^th and 16^thcenturies often referred to as the Age of Discovery, when Europeans developed a growing fascination with collecting a wide array of antiquities, natural specimens, books, prints, drawings, paintings, and other projects, largely influenced by the exploration and colonization of the Americas. Students will examine the practices and theoretical frameworks that informed early modern collecting and how they evolved into contemporary museological contexts, particularly around topics of repatriation, restitution, and deaccessioning.

A specialist in the visual and material culture of viceregal Latin American and contemporary Chicana/o America, Reyes explores identity, art patronage, and how images and symbols, particularly from border regions, shape our understanding of place and culture. She developed the 2025 exhibition Agua es Vida at the Rio Salado Audubon Center and Samouraï: Armure du Guerrier (2011) at the musée du Quai Branly with the Barbier-Mueller Museum (Dallas), published an entry in Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500-1800 (Delmonico, 2022), and co-authored an article in Feminist Formations (John Hopkins University Press, 2022), among other ongoing writing and book projects. 

Reyes, who earned her PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles, worked at the Getty Research Institute and served as the curatorial assistant at LACMA (2013-2015) and Mellon Fellow (2016-2017). Previously, she worked at the Hispanic Society Museum and Library (NY) and the Barbier-Mueller Museum, and from 2016-2019, she served as the book review editor for Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies. 

About Phoenix Art Museum

Since 1959, Phoenix Art Museum (PhxArt) has engaged millions of visitors with the art and fashion of our region and world. Located in Phoenix’s Central Corridor, PhxArt creates spaces of exchange and belonging for all audiences through dynamic exhibitions, collections, and art experiences. Each year, more than 250,000 guests engage with critically acclaimed national and international exhibitions, as well as the Museum’s collection of more than 21,000 works of American and Western American, Asian, European, Latin American, modern, and contemporary art and fashion. The Museum also presents vibrant photography exhibitions made possible through the Museum’s landmark partnership with the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson and is home to The Gene and Cathy Lemon Art Research Library, The Thorne Miniature Rooms, The Ullman Center for the Art of Philip C. Curtis, and Arizona Costume Institute (ACI). For the community, PhxArt hosts lectures, live performances, outstanding examples of global cinema, arts-education workshops, family-focused programs, and more. To learn more about Phoenix Art Museum, visit phxart.org, or call 602.257.1880. 

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PHOENIX (October 25, 2023) – This winter, Phoenix Art Museum presents Expanding Darshan: Manjari Sharma, To See and Be Seen, showcasing the remarkable, large-scale work of global contemporary artist Manjari Sharma. Organized by the Birmingham Museum of Art in Alabama, the exhibition features Sharma’s intricate photographic portraits from her Darshan series, paired alongside historical sculptural objects from the collection of the Birmingham Museum of Art, many of which are on view for the first time. Together these works explore issues of identity, multiculturalism, and personal mythology. Expanding Darshan: Manjari Sharma, To See and Be Seen will be on view from December 16, 2023 through April 14, 2024 in the Katz Wing at Phoenix Art Museum.

“Phoenix Art Museum is proud to present Expanding Darshan: Manjari Sharma, To See and Be Seen as the inaugural exhibition in a newly renovated temporary exhibition space located on the third floor of the Katz Wing,” said Jeremy Mikolajczak, the Sybil Harrington Director and CEO of Phoenix Art Museum. “This exhibition will acquaint our visitors with Manjari Sharma, an outstanding contemporary artist who is taking classic Hindu images and reimagining them through the photographic medium, in conversation with a selection of sculptural objects from the Birmingham Museum of Art collection. Expanding Darshan further illuminates our institutional approach of pairing historical works of art with modern and contemporary works, thus deepening connections and relationships with diverse and multi-generational communities. Expanding Darshan is accompanied by a robust series of arts-engagement programming, highlighting the tenets and cultural practices of Hinduism, the third largest religion worldwide.” 

Based in Los Angeles, Sharma was born and raised in Mumbai, India, and creates work rooted in photographic portraiture that addresses issues of identity, multiculturalism, and personal mythology. The series’ name refers to the Sanskrit word Darshana, which means “sight,” “vision,” or “appearance.” In the Hindu faith, ‘darshan’ refers to the experience of seeing or witnessing a deity, spiritual object, or holy person in either real or imagined form. True darshan is not simply a voyeuristic relationship—it is a mutual interaction between viewer and subject that results in a powerful form of worship.

To bring her Darshan series to fruition, Sharma worked across continents to organize and manage a large team of models and craftspeople, including prop builders, makeup artists, art directors, painters, carpenters, jewelry experts, and assistants, whose labor and expertise informed her photographic recreations of nine Hindu deities in temple settings. These images were created with custom fabrication and have been featured in The New York Times, Vice Magazine, and Los Angeles Times, among others.

“My practice is shaped by my cultural curiosity about the inner landscape of the human mind and its inextricable, elemental, and sacred relationship to ritual and mythology,” said Sharma. “I use my lens of introspection to conceptually collage from scriptures of yesterday juxtaposing them with how they transpire into everyday narratives of today. Darshan was the culmination of my deep-seated interest in studying, questioning, and celebrating these epic states of human imagination, history, performance, and transformation.”

In dialogue with these contemporary images, the exhibition presents much earlier sculptural objects from the collection of the Birmingham Museum of Art, many of which are on view to the public for the first time. These works date as early as the 7th century and offer waves of stylistic and regional iterations—from both South and Southeast Asia—of these same nine Hindu deities. Together with Sharma’s works, they amplify ongoing conversations about the inextricable relationship between art and religion, and how each generation of contemporary artists continues to cull inspiration from their personal experiences, individual cultures, and spiritual practices to refresh and re-envision images from an earlier history.

“Amplified by Sharma’s extraordinary photographs, this exhibition demonstrates—over centuries—a larger sphere of exchange throughout South and Southeast Asia of magnificent shared visual and textual sources not only for Hinduism, but also for Buddhism, Jainism, and even aspects of Islamic religious traditions as practiced throughout the regions,” said Katherine Anne Paul, PhD, the Virginia and William M. Spencer III Curator of Asian Art at the Birmingham Museum of Art.

Expanding Darshan: Manjari Sharma, To See and Be Seen is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue featuring photographs by Sharma and historical works from the collection of the Birmingham Museum of Art. The publication serves as an accessible primer to the arts of Hinduism by introducing nine of the most significant deities of the Hindu pantheon and their contemporary relevance in art and faith. The book also places Sharma in conversation with renowned curator Bridget Bray of Asia Society Texas Center, content that provides insight into the contemporary thoughts, challenges, and opportunities Sharma generated through her Darshan series. Angela May contextualizes other forms of contemporary artistic practice in Angkor, Cambodia, which respond to the UNESCO world heritage site. Finally, select case studies offer insights into institutional transparency, connoisseurship, and provenance for specific works featured in the volume.

High-resolution photography can be downloaded here. To request interviews, contact the Communications Office of Phoenix Art Museum at 602.257.2117 or samantha.santos@phxart.org.

About the Exhibition
Expanding Darshan: Manjari Sharma, To See and Be Seen is organized by Birmingham Museum of Art. The exhibition’s presentation at Phoenix Art Museum is coordinated by Janet Baker, PhD, Curator Emerita of Asian Art, and Rachel Sadvary Zebro, associate curator for collections, at Phoenix Art Museum, in collaboration with Katherine Anne Paul, PhD, the Virginia and William M. Spencer III Curator of Asian Art at the Birmingham Museum of Art.

Expanding Darshan: Manjari Sharma, To See and Be Seen is made possible through the generosity of Men’s Arts Council, with additional support from E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation and Vermaland, LLC.

All exhibitions at Phoenix Art Museum are underwritten by the Phoenix Art Museum Exhibition Excellence Fund, founded by The Opatrny Family Foundation with additional major support provided by Joan Cremin.

Admission is free for Museum Members; veterans, active-duty military, and their immediate families; youth aged 5 and younger; and Maricopa County Community Colleges students. Entrance into the exhibition is included in general admission for the public. Visitors may also enjoy reduced admission to the exhibition during voluntary-donation times on Wednesdays from 3 – 9 pm, made possible by SRP and City of Phoenix. For a full breakdown of general-admission prices and hours, see phxart.org/visit/.

About Phoenix Art Museum
Since 1959, Phoenix Art Museum has provided millions of guests with access to world-class art and experiences in an effort to ignite imaginations, create meaningful connections, and serve as a brave space for all people who wish to experience the transformative power of art. Located in Phoenix’s Central Corridor, the Museum is a vibrant destination for the visual arts and the largest art museum in the southwestern United States. Each year, more than 300,000 guests engage with critically acclaimed national and international exhibitions and the Museum’s collection of more than 20,000 works of American and Western American, Asian, European, Latin American, modern and contemporary art, and fashion design. The Museum also presents a comprehensive film program, live performances, and educational programs designed for visitors of all ages, along with vibrant photography exhibitions made possible through the Museum’s landmark partnership with the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona. To learn more about Phoenix Art Museum, visit phxart.org, or call 602.257.1880.

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PHOENIX (September 5, 2023) – On September 9, 2023, Phoenix Art Museum celebrates the grand re-opening of infinity mirror room You Who are Getting Obliterated in the Dancing Swarm of Fireflies (2005) by Yayoi Kusama following vital restoration work. The installation, which has been on view at the Museum since 2006, will now be exhibited in a more accessible, central location on the Museum’s first floor alongside new enhancements and didactics, offering visitors a more dynamic viewing experience. You Who are Getting Obliterated in the Dancing Swarm of Fireflies, the only Kusama infinity mirror room in the American Southwest, is included with general admission, and advance tickets are not required.

“Prior to this restoration work, Kusama’s wildly popular immersive installation had been on view in our
galleries for well over a decade, one of the longest installations of an infinity mirror room in a U.S. art
museum,” said Jeremy Mikolajczak, the Museum’s Sybil Harrington Director and CEO. “To ensure we were
following best practices for collection stewardship, we made various technology upgrades to enhance the
visitor experience of the artwork while remaining in line with the artist’s intent. This conservation work is
part of our overall commitment to investing in the preservation of the iconic works in our collection,
efforts also recently seen through the return of Julian Opie’s Julian and Suzanne Walking to the downtown Phoenix skyline and the refresh of Jurassic Age by Sui Jianguo at the Museum’s main entrance off Central Avenue.”

Born in 1929 in Matsumoto, Japan, Yayoi Kusama studied traditional Japanese painting before moving in
1958 to New York, where she created large-scale paintings with repeated motifs, crafted innovative
sculptures from everyday materials, directed performative Happenings at notable landmarks, and
experimented with fashion and fiction. Her artworks challenged the male-dominated art world, protested
war, and integrated art into life. From 1965, Kusama assembled light, sound, and sculpture in mirrored
rooms that suspend space and time. In her more recent works, the polka dots with which she covered
paintings and bodies become dots of starlight in faraway galaxies or a swarm of luminescent fireflies on a
summer evening, “obliterating” artist and audience.

Accompanying the Museum’s re-installation of You Who are Getting Obliterated in the Dancing Swarm of
Fireflies is new interpretative text that allows visitors to connect the immersive work to the Japanese
tradition of hotaru gari, when family and friends gather on early summer evenings to watch the luminous
lights of fireflies. This tradition is also explored through woodblock prints and in Japanese literature,
where fireflies symbolize love, beauty, and the manifestation of the soul. Guests will also discover how
You Who are Getting Obliterated in the Dancing Swarm of Fireflies references the Japanese tradition of
toro nagashi, the floating lanterns that guide the soul to its resting place.

In celebration of the restored artwork, PhxArt will host a special Creative Saturday event on September 9
from 10 am to 2 pm with themed art-making activities and engagement experiences that will allow visitors to connect more deeply with the artwork. Programming is included with general admission and will feature:

• A fireflies-inspired scavenger hunt
• A polka-dot pumpkin art activity
• Dance performances by Movement Source
• A mini infinity mirror room make-it station
• Mix-and-match selfie booth with The Garment League
• Lemon Art Research Library pop-up
• + A special art talk with Kusama scholar Midori Yamamura, Ph.D.

That same day, the Museum will also unveil a new fall rotation of art of Asia installations, which will be
on view in the Art of Asia Wing adjacent to Kusama’s infinity mirror room. Scenes and Seasons in Japanese Art presents two series of featured paintings, one from antiquity and one from modernity, that depict the festivals that mark the celebration of seasonal changes. The display will also showcase lacquer artworks with motifs of birds and flowers and other scenes, such as gazing at the moon, writing poetry, dancing, and visiting historic places, which all have seasonal associations in Japanese culture.

Nature as Still Life in Chinese Painting will showcase gifts from the Papp Family Foundation that present examples of the artistic study of nature’s microcosm, a practice that spans centuries. Featured works reflect the traditional Chinese appreciation for nature down to the smallest details, a practice based on the indigenous philosophy of Daoism, which views humankind as subservient to and in reverence of the perfect and imperfect beauty of the natural world.

High-resolution photography for these new exhibitions and installations can be downloaded here. To request more information, contact the Communications Office of Phoenix Art Museum at 602.257.2117 or samantha.santos@phxart.org.

About Phoenix Art Museum
Since 1959, Phoenix Art Museum has provided millions of guests with access to world-class art and experiences in an effort to ignite imaginations, create meaningful connections, and serve as a brave space for all people who wish to experience the transformative power of art. Located in Phoenix’s Central Corridor, the Museum is a vibrant destination for the visual arts and the largest art museum in the southwestern United States. Each year, more than 300,000 guests engage with critically acclaimed national and international exhibitions and the Museum’s collection of more than 20,000 works of American and Western American, Asian, European, Latin American, modern and contemporary art, and fashion design. The Museum also presents a comprehensive film program, live performances, and educational programs designed for visitors of all ages, along with vibrant photography exhibitions made possible through the Museum’s landmark partnership with the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona. To learn more about Phoenix Art Museum, visit phxart.org, or call 602.257.1880.

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PHOENIX (February 12, 2018) – Phoenix Art Museum announces the acceptance of a major gift from the Papp Family Foundation in honor of Marilyn and L. Roy Papp, who were Museum donors, volunteers, and supporters for many decades. The gift includes 22 significant works of Chinese painting from the Papp collection, one of the most prestigious and respected collections of Chinese paintings in the world. Additionally, the gift includes funding to support the naming of the Marilyn and L. Roy Papp Family Gallery in the Museum’s Art of Asia Wing. This gift is one of the largest and most significant donations to the Museum’s Asian arts collection and will directly benefit the Museum’s exhibitions and educational programs.

“We’re deeply grateful to the Papp Family Foundation for their unwavering support of Phoenix Art Museum,” said Amada Cruz, the Sybil Harrington Director and CEO of Phoenix Art Museum. “The Papp family has a long history of championing our museum, and this new gift is incredibly meaningful for us. The foundation’s gift made in honor of Marilyn and Roy’s decades of substantial loyalty and support represents a legacy of generosity that will directly impact our collection, our visitors, and our city for years to come.”

The 22 works have been gifted in honor of Marilyn and Roy Papp and their unprecedented generosity and support of the Museum. The family’s collection of Asian art began when Marilyn and Roy moved to Phoenix in 1978, but they first developed a deep love and appreciation of Asian culture during Roy’s term as the U.S. Director and Ambassador to the Asian Development Bank in the Philippines. Over time, Marilyn and Roy would amass the most significant private collection of Chinese painting in the United States with the guidance of several experts, including Claudia Brown, PhD, then curator of Asian art at Phoenix Art Museum. They made several large gifts to the Museum’s collection during their lifetimes and helped to turn the Museum into an international reference point for Chinese art, one that has been cited in many important books and scholarly research articles in the field.

The works included in this gift include hanging scrolls, hand scrolls, and fan paintings from the 14^th through the 19^th centuries, all superb examples of ink painting as well as historically significant evidence of the unique documentary nature of Chinese painting. Janet Baker, the Museum’s curator of Asian art, emphasizes the knowledge of imperial Chinese artistic practices that the Museum has gained from gifts from the Papp collection: “From inscriptions alongside images, we know that Chinese artists were acutely aware of their predecessors and often looked to the past for artistic inspiration. This phenomenon was pronounced in imperial China to an extent reached in no other place, and the multiple gifts the Museum has received from the Papp’s collection over the years have helped the Museum to document this important artistic phenomenon.” These works will now join the Phoenix Art Museum’s collection, strengthening the Museum’s ability to share these treasures with the public, provide important loans to other institutions, and continue to serve as an international reference point and repository for researchers.

The second part of the gift involves a gallery in the Art of Asia Wing to be named the Marilyn and L. Roy Papp Family Gallery. The gallery naming is especially apt because in addition to the works they donated, the Papps also dedicated their leadership and organizational expertise to the Museum in multiple capacities. Marilyn was active as a Docent and a member of Asian Arts Council for many years, and Roy served as a longtime member of the Board of Trustees. During his time serving as the chairman of the Board of Trustees in 1989 and 1992, Roy established the Museum’s first planned-giving program, which helped to expand the Museum’s financial sustainability, ensuring its ability to meet the needs of its community.

This gift has been made by the Papp Family Foundation. Harry, Marilyn and Roy’s son, and his wife Rose have continued Marilyn and Roy’s legacy of generosity and deep involvement in community organizations throughout Phoenix and have both served as board members of multiple institutions for decades. Rose is a past vice chair of the Museum’s Board of Trustees, and Harry serves on the Museum’s Planned Giving Committee.

About Phoenix Art Museum

Phoenix Art Museum has provided access to visual arts and educational programs in Arizona for more than 50 years and is the largest art museum in the Southwestern United States. Critically acclaimed national and international exhibitions are shown alongside the Museum’s permanent collection of more than 18,000 works of American, Asian, European, Latin American, Western American, modern and contemporary art, and fashion design. The Museum also presents festivals, a comprehensive film program, live performances and educational programs designed to enlighten, entertain and stimulate visitors of all ages. Visitors also enjoy vibrant photography exhibitions through the Museum’s landmark partnership with the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona. To learn more about Phoenix Art Museum, visitphxart.org, or call the 24-hour recorded information line at 602.257.1222.

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