Upper Category Member Events

Upper Category Member Events

Each year, the Upper Category Member Events Committee brings together a roster of special events for SAA members in the Contributor, Donor and Sponsor levels.

In 2024, we organized a variety of special events, including a Sponsor and Donor member event on Japanese inro with collector Steve Koppich; a Society Conversation with Akiko Walley, the Maude I. Kerns Associate Professor of Japanese Art at the University of Oregon, on the legendary Katsura Villa in Kyoto; a Society Conversation with Sarah Wenner, a Curatorial Fellow in Ancient Mediterranean and Middle Eastern Art at the Cincinnati Museum of Art, on Petra and other Nabataean sites; a Society Conversation with Suzanne Lecht, the founder and owner of Art Vietnam Gallery in Hanoi, on favorite works and upcoming exhibitions; and a Sponsor member event with Forrest McGill, former Asian Art Museum Wattis Curator of South and Southeast Asian Art on a Thai ceramic object in the museum's collection, Invisible Trade: What One Subject Suggest about the Flow of Ideas.



For 2025, the Upper Category Member Events Committee is hard at work on another stellar schedule of programs.

If you are not yet an Upper Category member, we invite your participation. Please contact the SAA Office Manager to upgrade your membership, or join as an Upper Category member.

Upcoming Upper Category Member Events

Check back soon for other upcoming Upper Category member events that are being planned. Thank you.

Paul Thiebaud Gallery Visit

Wednesday, May 7, 2025
11:00 a.m.
Place: Paul Thiebaud Gallery, 645 Chestnut Ave., San Francisco
Fee: $20 per person Society Upper Category members and guests. Advance registration must be received by SAA by Apr. 30, 2025.

Society Upper Category members are invited to tour the exhibit, "Where Things Begin: American Artists of the Asian Diaspora", at the exciting Paul Thiebaud Gallery in North Beach. This exhibition will explore how Asian-American artists and Asian artists who have spent significant portions of their lives in the U.S. with heritages from across Asia respond to and navigate the influence of both Eastern and Western aesthetics in their works. Several of the artists featured are well known, like Yasuhide Kobashi and Leo Valledor, and many are currently working and teaching in the Bay Area.

As part of our gallery visit, we will have the opportunity to tour the first solo exhibition at the Paul Thiebaud Gallery by Bay Area artist Mary Ijichi, who will be on hand to discuss her work and answer questions.

Interested event attendees are also invited to extend the visit with a no-host lunch at the trendy and highly acclaimed Flour & Water Pizzeria, a ten-minute walk from the gallery. If you would like to participate in this lunch, please contact Anne Kahn (anneqadams@aol.com) right away, so she can include you when she makes a restaurant reservation in mid April.

This event is limited to a maximum of 20 people, so please sign up immediately by following the registration link in the email invitation sent to all Upper Category members on Apr. 9, 2025.

Mary Ijichi photograph by Matthew Miller.