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MUSEUM News 50 Left: Dhodro Banam. India. H: 77 cm. © Museum Rietberg. Far right: Dhodro Banam. India. H: 61.5 cm. © Museum Rietberg. Right: Huka Banam. India. H: 61.5 cm. © Museum Rietberg. Left: Sarinda. India. H: 48 cm. © Museum Rietberg. Left: Dhodro Banam. India. H: 79.8 cm. © Museum Rietberg. Left: Dhodro Banam. India. H: 73 cm. © Museum Rietberg. Right: Sarinda. India. H: 78 cm. © Museum Rietberg. Below center: Damyen. Nepal or India. H: 60 cm. © Museum Rietberg. WEAVING COLORS Paris—Fukumi Shimura was recognized as a Living National Treasure in 1990 by the Japanese Ministry of Culture. This unusual woman has practiced the traditional art of weaving and dyeing kimonos for more than sixty years. Beginning in the 1950s, she specialized in the creation of tsumugi, the somber silk garments traditionally worn by Japanese peasants, elevating them to a true art form. Shimura makes her dyes from vegetal materials such as madder, sappan, gardenia, and onion, which she finds in nature near her workshop; fixes the colors with minerals; and spins and weaves the silk threads by hand. She works according to the seasons, following the lunar calendar. Her knowledge of colors, of their nuances and of the philosophies they express is prodigious. Tisser les couleurs, Kimonos d’un Trésor National Vivant (Weaving Colors, the Kimonos of a Living National Treasure) at the Maison de la Culture du Japon in Paris, on view until January 17, 2015, showcases a selection of Shimura’s creations coupled with her equally metaphysical poetry. VIELLES OF INDIA Zurich—Well-known German advertising illustrator and artist Bengt Fosshag became interested in exotic stringed instruments in the 1960s and in the years since has put together one of the most important collections of them in Europe. Ninety-two instruments from that collection, almost all Indian or Nepalese, have recently been acquired by the Museum Rietberg in Zurich, and these are currently the subject of an interesting exhibition there, À cordes et à corps—Instruments de Musique de l’Inde (Sculpted Sound: Stringed Instruments from India), which will be on view there until April 19, 2015. The Santal are the largest aboriginal community in India. Although they are in the process of being Hinduized and Christianized, they have preserved many of their ancestral beliefs. Music plays an important part in their traditional lives, and stringed instruments, in particular ones somewhat resembling the medieval European vielle, are most often employed for this. The bow-played dhodro banam and huka banam are the most visually striking of these instruments, and they are often complex assemblages of varied anthropomorphic cultural elements. Unfortunately, very little information is available about them, and these days they have become quite rare. The exhibition, which will be on display for almost a year, involves a research relationship with the National Handicrafts and Handlooms Museum of New Delhi to coordinate field investigations with the goal of gaining a better understanding of the cultural, historical, and artistic aspects of these instruments. In the absence of more complete anthropological data, the exhibition’s curators have taken an aesthetic approach to their presentation, floating the pieces without bases to emphasize their impact.


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