Art Reviews: Bali in San Francisco

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Holland Cotter

The rice goddess Dewi Sri, made of palm leaves
during the early to mid 20th century, is in this show.

CALIFORNIA - [The Asian Art Museum's] vivid current special exhibition, which is as stimulating to look at as it is to think about. Among others things, it offers a plausible model for how to do a historical loan show that a) uses unfamiliar and affordable materials (many of the objects are from Dutch ethnographic museums); b) finesses the vexed issue of authenticity by seamlessly linking a high-art past with the tourist-art present; and c) gives us exoticism but tempers it with realism. [link]