Breakfast is included in the Tour Price every morning as follows: choice of one entrée item, juice and coffee including specialty coffees. Breakfast is served in Firefly Restaurant from 7 to 10 a.m. No room service is available.

9:40 a.m. Meet in the hotel lobby prior to transferring by a ride-share service such as Uber or Lyft, or by taxi, to the Smithsonian National Gallery of Asian Art.

ADDRESS: 4525 Oak Street 

Hotel Madera to NMoAA: 12 min. by car

10:00 a.m. Full day at the Smithsonian National Gallery of Asian Art: The Freer and The Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, with three curator-led tours and time on your own. 

ADDRESS: 1050 Independence Ave., SW. Enter at the Sackler Gallery

https://asia.si.edu/

2023 marks the 100th anniversary of the National Museum of Asian Art’s founding. It is comprised of the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, which care for exceptional collections of Asian art, with more than 45,000 objects dating from the Neolithic period to today and originating from the ancient Near East to China, Japan, Korea, South and Southeast Asia, and the Islamic world.  Nearly a century old, the Freer Gallery of Art also holds a significant group of American works of art largely dating to the late nineteenth century. It houses the world’s largest collection of diverse works by James McNeill Whistler, including the famed Peacock Room.

10-11 a.m. Begin with a tour of the exhibition, The Art of Knowing in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Himalayas with either Dr. Debra Diamond, Elizabeth Moynihan Curator of South Asian and Southeast Asian Art, or Emma Stein, Assistant Curator of South and Southeast Asian Art. 

The Art of Knowing brings together highlights from the collections to explore religious and practical knowledge across time, space, and cultures. Featuring stone sculptures, gilt bronzes, and painted manuscripts from India, Nepal, Tibet, Bangladesh, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, Cambodia, and Indonesia, this exhibition illuminates the critical role of visual culture in conveying Buddhist and Hindu teachings from the 9th to the 20th centuries. From Ganesha, the god of beginnings, to goddesses who personify wisdom, the artworks on view tell individual stories and reveal ways of knowing our world. The Art of Knowing asks how artists and objects shape wisdom traditions. How do shared images and designs reveal the movement of people and ideas across geographical regions? What do goddesses teach? And how does attaining knowledge end suffering?

Arthur M. Sackler Gallery | Gallery 22

11:15-12:15 p. Another curator-led tour will follow of Feast Your Eyes: A Taste for Luxury in Ancient Iran led by curators Antonietta Catanziriti, Massumeh Farhad, and Simon Rettig.

Gallery 21

Lunch No host lunch nearby at the Pavilion Café overlooking the Sculpture Garden. 8 min, .4 miles

ADDRESS: 101-199 9th St. NW

2:15-3:15 p. Guided tour of Rinpa: Creativity Across Time and Space and Meeting Tessai: Modern Japanese Art from the Cowles Collection with Frank Feltens, The Japan Foundation Associate Curator of Japanese Art.

Rinpa Screens (Freer Gallery of Art | Gallery 5)

Whether displayed in private households or in temples, screens were an integral part of traditional Japanese interiors. Artists could experiment with painting techniques and motifs on these large, decorative surfaces. The three-dimensional, folded format allowed them to play with perception and to cleverly trick the viewer’s eye so that scenes of undulating dragons, stormy seas, and elegant foliage came to life and animated a room. Explore a selection of screens painted in the Rinpa style, a movement known for stylized forms in bright colors that spanned the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. A complementary display of ceramics demonstrates the aesthetic exchange facilitated by trade between Japan and China and interrogates what makes a work of art Japanese.

Meeting Tessai: Modern Japanese Art from the Cowles Collection (Freer Gallery of Art | Gallery 8)

Tomioka Tessai (1836–1924) exemplifies the modern Japanese painter. Contemporaries praised his avant-garde works, yet Tessai created his nonconformist paintings in a traditional way, basing them on ancient Japanese art and Ming and Qing paintings imported from China. Tessai’s teacher Ōtagaki Rengetsu (1791–1875)—nun, potter, calligrapher, poet, political activist—was at the vortex of immense political changes in Japan as the country’s feudal system collapsed and a constitutional monarchy was established. Rengetsu’s art, which harks back to inspirations from the twelfth century, inspired a generation of modern artists like Tessai. Meeting Tessai highlights a transformative gift of early modern and modern Japanese paintings and calligraphy from the Mary and Cheney Cowles Collection. It is also the first major American exhibition in five decades to explore the significance of pan–East Asian influences—a pertinent topic in today’s interconnected world—through the work of Tessai, Rengetsu, and modern Japanese painting.

The balance of the day is free to explore other exhibitions, among them:

SPECIAL EXHIBITIONS AT THE FREER

· A Journey of Taste: Freer and Japanese Scroll Mounting (Freer Gallery of Art | Galleries 6 and 6a)

· Looking Out, Looking In - Art in Late Imperial China (Freer Gallery of Art | Gallery 13)

· Art and Industry: China’s Ancient Houma Foundry (Freer Gallery of Art | Gallery 18)

· Afterlife - Ancient Chinese Jades (Freer Gallery of Art | Gallery 19)

· Center of the World - China and the Silk Road (Freer Gallery of Art | Gallery 16)

· Promise of Paradise - Ancient Chinese Buddhist Sculpture (Freer Gallery of Art | Gallery 17)

· Setting the Bar - Arts of the Song Dynasty (Freer Gallery of Art | Gallery 15)

· Rediscovering Korea’s Past - Korean ceramics (Freer Gallery of Art | Gallery 14)

· Engaging the Senses - Arts of the Islamic World (Freer Gallery of Art | Galleries 3 and 4)

· Body Image - Arts of the Indian Subcontinent (Freer Gallery of Art | Galleries 1 and 2)

SPECIAL EXHIBITIONS AT THE ARTHUR M. SACKLER GALLERY

· Anyang: China’s Ancient City of Kings (Arthur M. Sackler Gallery | Galleries 23 and 24)

· Ay-Ō’s Happy Rainbow Hell (Arthur M. Sackler Gallery | Gallery 25)

· Ancient Yemen: Incense, Art, and Trade (Arthur M. Sackler Gallery | Gallery 22)

· The Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room (Arthur M. Sackler Gallery | Gallery 26)

· Feast Your Eyes: A Taste for Luxury in Ancient Iran (Arthur M. Sackler Gallery | Gallery 21)

· Prehistoric Spirals: Earthenware from Thailand (Arthur M. Sackler Gallery | Gallery 29)

 Return to the hotel at leisure.

 Dinner is on your own.

Overnight Washington, DC

IMAGE:  Japanese lacquer dish with cover.  Gift of the Avant Family.  SI-160-2023

9:45 a.m. Meet in the hotel lobby prior to transferring by a ride-share service or going on foot to The Textile Museum.

Hotel Madera to Textile Museum: 4 min. by car; 13 min. on foot (.6 miles)

10:00 a.m. Visit the Textile Museum (at GWU) with Lee Talbot, Asian textile curator. 

ADDRESS: 701 21st Street, NW, Washington, DC 20052

https://museum.gwu.edu/

Begin with a tour of the museum including a small exhibition of animal-patterned textiles from the collection, the majority of which will be Asian. Then have a private session with Asian textiles in the Cotsen Textile Traces Study Center, which houses one of the world’s most significant textile study collections ever assembled.  Cornerstones of the collection are fragments from Japan, China, pre-Hispanic Peru and 16th- to 18th-century Europe. 

Free time to see the current exhibition, Hand-Stitched Worlds: The Cartography of Quilts, and the fabulous shop.

The Textile Museum Collection was founded by collector and connoisseur George Hewitt Myers, and includes more than 21,000 examples of handmade textile art representing five continents and five millennia.  In 2011, leaders at GW and The Textile Museum announced an affiliation that would bring the museum to the university to increase academic opportunities on campus, invigorate textile scholarship, and transform collections care. In 2018, the museum expanded its scholarly resources when it received the Cotsen Textile Traces Study Collection, one of the world’s most significant textile study collections. 

Lunch venue near GWU to be determined.

Divide into two smaller groups for the visit to the private collection, as follows:

Group #1:

A private coach will pick-up at 1:45 p.m. to transfer to Bethesda, MD, (22-45 min.) for a visit from 2:30-4 p.m., then return you to Hotel Madera by 4:45 p.m.

Group #2:

A private coach will pick-up at 3:15 p.m. to transfer to Bethesda, MD, (22-45 min.) for a visit from 4:15-5:45 p.m., then return you to Hotel Madera by 6:30 p.m.

Robert and Betsy Feinberg have graciously agreed to share their private collection with us. They have an exquisite collection consisting of Edo period paintings and screens, and contemporary Japanese ceramics. Drinks and light refreshments will follow.

Dinner and the evening are at leisure.

Overnight Washington, DC

IMAGE:  Fragment with tiger and bird on a floral ground. China, Xinjiang, 13th century. Silk; tapestry weave, 26.7 x 26.7 cm. Cotsen Textile Traces Study Collection T-1474. 

9:00 a.m. Having completed check-out, depart by coach to Baltimore. 1hr45

11:00 a.m. Arrive at Evergreen Museum & Library for a docent-led tour.

WEB: https://museums.jhu.edu/evergreen-museum-library/

ADDRESS: 4545 N. Charles Street, Baltimore 21210 (9 min. N of BMA)

Evergreen Museum & Library is housed in a Gilded Age mansion surrounded by 26 acres of gardens and woods. The museum is home to a renowned collection of fine and decorative arts, rare books, and manuscripts assembled by two generations of Baltimore’s civic-minded Garrett family (1878-1952). Though originally constructed in 1858, Evergreen was drastically expanded and altered by the Garretts to accommodate their eclectic collections, and today is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Visitors can experience the museum through guided tours that explore the Garretts, their extraordinary collections, and Evergreen’s transformation from a country villa to a hub for contemporary musicians, writers, and artists.

12:45 p.m. Depart Evergreen Museum. 8 min., 1.8 miles

1:00 p.m. No-host lunch at Gertrude’s, situated within the Baltimore Museum of Art. 

The main dining room overlooks a sculpture garden featuring works by Alexander Calder, Isamu Noguchi, and Auguste Rodin. Founded in 1998, the restaurant was on the vanguard of the farm-to-table movement and now has decades-long relationships with Maryland farms and fisheries. 

ADDRESS: Baltimore Museum of Art, 10 Art Museum Drive, Baltimore

2:30 p.m. Visit the Baltimore Museum of Art.

We will begin with a session with Jenna Paper-Evers, our host in the Dorman/Mazaroff Study Center for Prints and Drawings, to see BMA’s Chinese and Japanese works on paper. Then tour the Asian art gallery with Frances Klapthor, Associate Curator of Asian Art and Interim Department Head Arts of Africa, the Americas, Asia and Pacific Islands.

4:30 p.m. Tour ends. Free time to view the Cone Collection of modern art, the crown jewel of the BMA, featuring works by Matisse, Picasso, Pissarro, Courbet, and Degas. Collected by Baltimore sisters Claribel and Etta Cone from the early-mid 20th century, the Cone Collection is one of the world’s most important art collections. The BMA’s Matisse collection encompasses more than 1,200 works by the artist, making it the largest and most comprehensive of its kind found in a public museum. The trove consists of around 500 pieces donated by the Cone sisters and some 700 acquired since then. Notably, the artist’s daughter, Marguerite Duthuit, gave several works from her personal collection to the gallery, while the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation, launched by the artist’s son and his wife in 1995, donated a major selection of prints. The museum is open until 9 p.m.

5:15 p.m. Continue by coach to the hotel. 10 min., 2-3 miles

5:30 p.m. Check-in to Revival at Mount Vernon Place, a boutique hotel that was originally a multi-family dwelling. Subsequently, the design of the hotel’s 107 guest rooms reflects how Revival’s former residents might have lived in the space during an extended period, with multiple design styles that converged over time.

ADDRESS: 101 W. Monument St., Baltimore 21201

RESERVED FOR SAA MEMBERS:

Standard Rooms with one King Bed (275 sq ft) or two Double Beds (345 sq ft); rooms feature Mod-Century Modern furniture and curated artwork and mixed media collages; rooms do not have city views

- Premium View King @ $50 per room per night x 2 nights, or $100 total

- Junior Suite with a King Bed @ $50 per room per night x 2 nights, or $100 total

- Junior Suite with 2 Double Beds @ $50 per room per night x 2 nights, or $100 total

- Premium Junior Suite with 1 King @ $125 per room per night x 2 nights, or $250 total

- Premium Junior Suite with 2 Double Beds @ $150 per room per night x 2 nights, or $300 total

Dinner is on your own. A List of Suggested Restaurants will be provided.

NOTE: The Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University offers free recitals at its location at 1 E. Mount Vernon Place. Check the calendar for events: https://peabody.jhu.edu/concerts-events/.

Overnight Baltimore

IMAGE:    Unidentified Artists. Tripod Vessel with Acrobats Balanced on Rim, c. 200. Possibly Henan province, China. Earthenware with unfired pigments over slip. 8 x 5 3/4 x 5 in. (20.3 x 14.6 x 12.7 cm.). Julius Levy Memorial Fund, BMA 1988.2.  Photo courtesy of Baltimore Museum of Art.

Breakfast is available in the Dashery Café from 6:30 a.m. on Friday. 

A $20 breakfast voucher is included, and will cover tax and gratuity.

9:45 a.m. Meet in the hotel lobby before walking to The Walters. 1 minute, 350 feet

10:00 a.m. Full morning at The Walters Art Museum.

ADDRESS:  600 N. Charles Street

https://thewalters.org/

The Walters collection of Asian art comprises about 9,000 objects and encompasses works spanning 2,000 years of artistic traditions from diverse cultures and regions, most notably Japan, Korea, China, India, Nepal, Tibet, Myanmar, Thailand, and Cambodia. The collection of Islamic art, comprising some 1,200 objects, is one of the richest in the United States with particular strengths in Persian, Turkish, and Mediterranean cultures, as well as Islamic South Asia. Visitors can continue to see other renowned works of art from India, Nepal, and Tibet in The John and Berthe Ford Gallery.

Adriana Proser (Ani), Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Quincy Scott Curator of Asian Art, and Dany Chan, Associate Curator of Asian Art (formerly at the Asian Art Museum), will lead private tours of Across Asia: Arts of East Asia, South and Southeast Asia, and the Islamic World and the Ford Collection of South and Southeast Asia. During our visit we will also be welcomed by Director Julia Marciari-Alexander. 

The Across Asia exhibition, which opened April 23rd, 2023, after a multi-year renovation, features over 600 works of art spanning 5,000 years and marks the first time in the museum’s history that its core Asian and Islamic art collections are on view together. It highlights the connections among art, cultures, religions, and ideas across the vast geography of Asia, and includes examples of architecture, calligraphy, ceramics, cloisonné, enamelwork, lacquerware, manuscripts, metalwork, painting, sculpture, and textiles.

We will see some of the most popular works in the museum, as well as many works which have previously not been on view, including a 19th-century Buddhist pulpit (thammat) from Thailand. One of the only known Thai pulpits in a U.S. museum, the thammat will be on view for the first time after undergoing extensive treatment in the Walters’ conservation lab, supported by a grant from the Carter Foundation.

1:00 p.m. Lunch at a nearby restaurant within walking distance. Among options:

· Dooby’s (https://www.doobys.com/): Korean-inspired café 

· Café Fili (https://www.cafefili.com/): Mediterranean cafe

· Tabor Ethiopian Restaurant (http://taborethiopiancuisine.com/): Ethiopian cafe

· Nepal House Restaurant (https://www.thenepalhouse.com/): Indian buffet

· Mount Vernon Marketplace (https://mtvernonmarketplace.com/): Tons of choices under one roof)

2:30 p.m. Transfer to the American Visionary Art Museum. 11 min. by car, 2.3 miles

2:45 p.m. Docent-led tour at the American Visionary Art Museum. 

Officially opened in 1995 on the former site of a copper paint factory and a whiskey warehouse, AVAM specializes in “outsider art,” or art produced by self-taught individuals, usually without formal training, whose works arise from an innate personal vision that revels foremost in the creative act itself. AVAM's 1.1 acre campus contains 67,000 square feet of exhibition space and a permanent collection of approximately 4,000 pieces. The museum is famous for its kinetic sculptures from AVAM's annual race, and hosts mega-exhibitions as well as smaller exhibitions to great delight. The tour runs one hour.

https://www.avam.org/

ADDRESS: 800 Key Highway, Baltimore, MD next to Federal Hill Park and the Inner Harbor 

4/4:30 p.m. Return to the hotel. 11 min. by car, 2.3 miles

6:45 p.m. Depart the hotel by ride-transfer service. 12 min., 3/6 miles

7:00 p.m. Farewell dinner at La Cuchara, a top-rated restaurant featuring Basque cuisine, housed in the historic Meadow Mill, which was once the home of London Fog raincoat company. 

ADDRESS: 3600 Clipper Mill Road (10 min. N by car)

https://www.lacucharabaltimore.com/

Seating will be at one table in the private London Fog Room.

Wine and beer with dinner are included; pre-dinner drinks are not included, and can be settled directly with the server.

8:45 p.m. Depart the restaurant and return to the hotel by ride-share service.

Overnight Baltimore

IMAGE:    Made for Ottoman sultan Mahmud I (r. 1730-1754), this bejeweled gun conceals compartments for a dazzlingly adorned dagger and set of writing instruments. To get to them, one opens the hinged door bearing the diamond-encrusted insignia or tuğra of Mahmud I and the date AH 1145 (1732/33 CE). This unique set of objects represents two activities important to Ottoman sultans in this period: marksmanship and calligraphy. Sultans were expected to be both proficient hunters and adept writers. The gun was never shot, though, and therefore probably served as a spectacular element of imperial regalia. 

1732/33; Miquelet lock: 1861/62 .  Steel, wood (ash), gold, gilded silver, silver, nephrite, diamonds, emeralds (or beryls), rubies (or spinels); later miquelet lock, steel, gold.

H: 9 5/8 × L: 55 × D: 2 3/4 in. (24.5 × 139.7 × 7 cm).

Photo courtesy of The Walters Museum of Art

Our tour ends after breakfast. Check out of the hotel and transfer independently to the airport.

IMAGE:   A mihrab is a niche in a mosque or other Muslim religious building that indicates the direction for prayer toward Mecca, recalling the place where the Prophet Muhammad stood to lead the early Muslim community in prayer. Ceramic plaques in the shape of mihrabs are often found in shrines and mausoleums and on tombstones and cenotaphs (funerary monuments), where they may have had a commemorative or memorial function.

With its combination of molded and painted decoration, this blue and brown lusterware work is typical of ceramic "mihrab" plaques made in medieval Iran. The large inscription in the outer frame begins with the "bismallah" ("In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate") and continues with a Qur'anic verse that refers directly to the recitation and prayer that Muslims perform in front of a "mihrab": "Establish regular prayers at the sun's decline till the darkness of the night, and the morning prayer and reading: for the prayer and reading in the morning carry their testimony" (Sura al-Bani Isra'il: chapter 17, verse 78). One of the final, and shortest, chapters of the Qur'an (Sura al-Ikhlas: chapter 112) is inscribed on the white band around the central arch. 

Photo courtesy of The Walters Art Museum