(listed alphabetically by the name of the museum or gallery)

Vietnam: Journeys of Body, Mind, and Spirit
American Museum of Natural History
New York, New York
through January 4, 2004
Woodblock prints and the woodblocks from which they are made; handmade textiles, including tribal bridal costumes; historical and contemporary ceramics and baskets; palanquins carried during festivals; votive paper goods; water puppets; toy motorbikes made of recycled aluminum cans; the masks young children wear as they parade through their neighborhoods on mid-Autumn festival; and an ancestral altar are among the four hundred ceremonial and everyday items on view in this exhibition of life in Vietnam today, which was organized in collaboration with the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology in Hanoi.

Himalayas: An Aesthetic Adventure
Art Institute of Chicago
Chicago, Illinois
April 5 - August 17
An exploration of the artistic achievement that developed from a spiritual tradition unique to the Himalayas. Works of art from India, Kashmir, Nepal, Pakistan, Tibet, and Bhutandating from the sixth to the nineteenth centuries, from public and private collections in North America, Europe, and Asiaincluding temple sculptures of stone and wood; terra-cotta figures; bronzes that have been embellished with inlaid gemstones, gilding, and paint; vividly colored paintings on cloth, palm leaf, paper, and wood; and ritual objects of various media.

Montein Boonma: Temple of the Mind
Asia Society Museum
New York, New York
through May 11
A retrospective of the work of Montein Boonma (1953-2000). The Thai artist's sculptural installations combine industrial materials such as steel and bricks with ephemeral materials such as spices and fragrances in order to explore the notion of works of art as spaces in which one can experience the senses and contemplate the impermanence of human life and the physical world.

From Monastery to Marketplace: Books and Manuscripts of Asia
Asian Art Museum
San Francisco, California
through November 2
In honor of the museum's new building, which formerly housed San Francisco's Main Library, an exhibition of secular and religious texts, albums, calligraphy, and manuscriptsall from the museum's collection and dating from the 1100s through the 1900sthat highlight the significance of illustrated and written materials in Asian cultures.

Quiet Beauty: Fifty Centuries of Japanese Folk Ceramics from the Montgomery Collection
Bard Graduate Center Gallery
New York, New York
through June 15
Japanese folk ceramicsprimarily vernacular objects intended for use by farmers, artisans, and merchantsdating from 3000 BCE to 1985 CE, that exemplify a near-perfect combination of form, proportion, color, texture, line, gesture, movement, energy, and sense of spiritual harmony. All of the objects are from the Montgomery Collection in Switzerland, arguably the most important collection of Japanese folk art outside of Japan.

Weaving China's Past: The Amy S. Clague Collection of Chinese Textiles
China Institute Gallery
New York, New York
through June 7
More than thirty examples of Chinese silk textilesbrocades, tapestries, and embroideries dating from the Song (960-129) through the Qing (1644-1911) dynasties, including Buddhist ritual items, banners, clothing, and throne covers.

The Sensuous and the Sacred: Chola Bronzes from South India
Dallas Museum of Art
Dallas, Texas
April 4 - June 15
South Indian bronzes produced between the ninth and thirteenth centuries, from important collections of temple bronzes in the United States and Europe. Photomurals of temples, as well as bronze statuary fully draped, ornamented, and ready for processional rituals, recreate the context in which these religious icons are seen and worshiped in South Indian temples today.

Selections from the Guoyun Lou Collection of the Shanghai Museum
Hong Kong Museum of Art
Hong Kong
through June 15
A collection of paintings and calligraphy assembled by Gu Wenbin (1811-1889) of Suzhou and his descendants over a period of one hundred years and donated to the Shanghai Museum in the mid-twentieth century spans the Song through the Qing dynasties and includes works by Shen Zhou (1427-1509), Tang Yin (1470-1523), Xu Wei (1521-93), Dong Qichang (1555-1636), the "Four Wangs" (late sixteenth to early eighteenth centuries), Shitao (1641-1707), Gong Xian (1619-89), and Hua Yan (1682-1756).

Transmitting the Forms of Divinity: Early Buddhist Art from Korea and Japan
Japan Society
New York, New York
April 9 - June 22
An exploration of the early development of Buddhist art in Korea and Japan and the formative links between the ancient cultures of each nation through a selection of sculptures, reliquaries, sutras, ritual objects, and ceramic roof tiles, dating from the sixth through the ninth centuries and drawn from important museum and temple collections in Korea and Japan. Among them are several National Treasures.

Luxury Textiles East and West: Ceremony and Celebration
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Los Angeles, California
through July 20
The first part of a three-part rotating exhibition celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the museum's Department of Costume and Textiles features ritual garments and ceremonial textiles from the museum's collection, among them ritual vestments from China and Japan, Buddhist needleloop diadems, and meticulously woven cloths from South and Southeast Asia, including a large elephant patola.

Chinese Export Porcelain at The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
New York, New York
through July 3
Bowls and vases, ewers and tureens, plates and extensive services, dating from the mid-sixteenth century through the third quarter of the nineteenth century, made in China for the European and the American markets, all from the museum's extensive collection.

The History of Japanese Art Photography, 1854-2000

Half a Century of Chinese Woodblock Prints: From the Communist Revolution to the Open-Door Policy and Beyond, 1945-1998
National Museum of Contemporary Art
Seoul through May 5
Prints produced from the time of the Chinese Communist Revolution to the present that demonstrate the history and characteristics of modern woodblock printmaking in China.

Happy Birthday, Atom! Celebrating Tezuka's Astro Boy
The Ohio State University Cartoon Research Library
Columbus, Ohio
through May 31
An exhibition on manga and robots, in honor of the cartoon character Tetsuwan Atomu ("Mighty Atom")known as Astro Boy in English child robot created by Japanese cartoonist Osamu Tezuka (1928-1989). In the original science fiction graphic novel that began publication in 1951, the robot character was brought to life on April 7, 2003.

Guardian of the Flame: Art of Sri Lanka
Phoenix Art Museum
Phoenix, Arizona
through May 11
Paintings and sculptures, drawn from private collections, that highlight the Buddhist and Hindu culture of Sri Lanka from the second to the nineteenth centuries.

Chen Zhen: A Tribute
P.S. 1 MoMA
Long Island City, New York
through May 25
Installations, sculptures, and drawings created during the last five years of the artist's life. Among them, an enormous, interactive piece, Jue Chang (50 Strokes to Each) (1998), consisting of more than a hundred chairs and beds that have been stretched with animal skins to produce makeshift drums, which viewers are invited to play. Zen Garden ( 2000), an alabaster and metal sculpture, explores the encounter and fusion of two visions of medicineChinese and Westernin relation to the human body. Chen, who emigrated from Shanghai to Paris in 1986, died of autoimmune hemolytic anemia in December 2000, at the age of forty-five.

Auto*Focus: Raghubir Singh's Way into India
Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Washington, D.C. through August 10
Forty-eight photographs that combine the late Indian photographer Raghubir Singh's passion for vibrant color and the Indian landscape with his fascination with the Ambassador car, whose distinctive silhouette can be seen all over India. The Ambassador appears in all the photographs: either it is placed in the landscape, or, conversely, the landscape is seen through the car's windows or reflected in its mirrors.

Image and Empire: Picturing India during the Colonial Era
The Arthur M. Sackler Museum
Cambridge, Massachusetts
through May 25
This exhibition highlights the shared innovations in style, subject matter, and vision as both local and foreign artists undertook the task of picturing India during the period of colonial expansion, from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries, and includes picturesque landscapes and "Company painting" (works commissioned by British residents serving the East India Company), as well as luxurious ivories and documentary photography.

Noguchi: Contours
UBS PaineWebber Art Gallery
New York, New York
April 10 - June 20
Twenty-seven works from the Noguchi Museum collection, including sixteen large-scale scroll drawings of the human figure done in 1930, when Isamu Noguchi (1904-88) spent eight months in Beijing studying with Qi Baishi. This is the first time these drawings have been shown as a group since the 1930s.

Picturing Cathay: Maritime and Cultural Images of the China Trade
The University of Hong Kong Museum and Art Gallery
Hong Kong
through June 22
Over sixty paintings and export items from public and private collectionsworks produced mostly in and around the ports of southern China, Hong Kong, and Macao and dating from the mid-eighteenth to the late-nineteenth centuriesexplore how trade, particularly maritime trade, encouraged cross-cultural artistic expression.

Tibet: Mountains and Valleys, Castles and Tents from the Newark Museum Collection
Williams College Museum of Art
Williamstown, Massachusetts
through August 3
An exhibition that explores Tibetan culture through objects and ornaments, some dating to the thirteenth century, of aristocrats, traders, and herdsmen, as well as film and photographs from the first Western visitors to Tibet in the early 1900s. Colorful garments, rugs, furniture, and ceremonial headdresses, saddle blankets, prayer wheels, and portable wooden teapots are among the artifacts on display.