Collected Letters: Liu Jianhua Installation

In 2016, as a 50th anniversary gift to the museum, the Society for Asian Art commissioned a major work by Liu Jianhua, one of China’s best-known contemporary ceramic sculpture artists.

The work comprises approximately 2,000 pieces of white porcelain formed into letters of the English alphabet and components of Chinese characters, suspended from the ceiling of the second-floor Loggia. The artist provides only the building blocks of words, leaving it to viewers to create meaning. The artwork’s location is especially apropos: the space offers an opportunity for dialogue with the original engraved literary quotations on the Loggia’s walls, dating to the building’s previous incarnation as San Francisco’s Main Library. Collected Letters was unveiled to the Society members at a reception on March 20, 2016.

For more information and photos, please see the artwork as it is featured in the museum’s online collection.

The Society for Asian Art is grateful to Liu Jianhua and the Asian Art Museum for giving us permission to feature Collected Letters on our website and in our promotional materials.

Collected Letters, 2016, by Liu Jianhua (Chinese, b. 1962). Porcelain with glaze and
monofilament. Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, Acquisition made possible by the
Society for Asian Art in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Asian Art Museum, F2016.2.
© Liu Jianhua. Photograph © Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.