Kansas City
“The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860–1989”
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
4525 Oak Street
July 19, 2013–January 3, 2010
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum | New York
1071 Fifth Avenue
January 30–April 19, 2009
Curated by Alexandra Munroe
“The Third Mind” looks to subvert the narrative of cultural influence’s one-way flow from West to East by focusing on how artists, writers, and filmmakers in the United States have consistently drawn on “Asian” (mainly Japanese, Chinese, and Indian) artistic traditions and religious practices. Curator Alexandra Munroe arranges more than 200 works into seven roughly chronological sections, beginning with pieces by Mary Cassatt and John La Farge, among others, and ending with the likes of Meredith Monk and Bill Viola. The show’s title, referencing a 1965 work by William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin that recombined textual fragments to form new narratives, evokes the eclecticism that has characterized American appropriations of the Asian ever since Matthew C. Perry landed in Japan.