the eight directions of the wind: Edmund de Waal at The Huntington
Oct. 18, 2025–Oct. 26, 2026
Huntington Art Gallery, Chinese Garden, and Japanese Garden
Each installation incorporates text, natural materials, and recent works by de Waal that create new perspectives and connections among The Huntington’s collecting areas. These installations—exploring the movement of ideas, people, and objects—invite visitors to reflect on the transmission of stories and histories that shape contemporary culture. Like the primary points of a compass rose, “the eight directions of the wind” serves as a thought-provoking guide to travel through The Huntington’s iconic spaces.
De Waal has received international recognition for his explorations of the contingency of memory, bringing particular histories of loss and exile into renewed life through art and literature. He is renowned for his bestselling family memoir, The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance (2010), which recounts the story of his Jewish ancestors through their collection of Japanese netsuke, or small carvings. The book has garnered multiple literary awards and has been translated into 30 languages.
His international solo art exhibitions include the critically acclaimed “library of exile” at the British Museum, an installation of more than 2,000 books by exiled authors, primarily in translation, alongside his own porcelain vessels. His thoughtful and poetic interventions in historic houses and museum collections include exhibitions at the Frick Collection, the Kunsthistorisches Museum, and the Musée Nissim de Camondo.
“De Waal is among the most innovative and intellectually profound artists working today, and we are honored to collaborate with him on a project that so deeply resonates with The Huntington’s efforts to illuminate the movement of ideas across time and place,” said Christina Nielsen, Hannah and Russel Kully Director of the Art Museum at The Huntington. “His installations offer meditations on beauty, displacement, and the fragility of culture.”
Three Sites, Three Meditations
De Waal’s installations for “the eight directions of the wind” are titled “on sanctuary,” “on porcelain,” and “on shadows”—located respectively in the Huntington Art Gallery, the Chinese Garden’s Studio for Lodging the Mind, and the Japanese Garden’s Marsh Tea House. Together, they create a contemplative experience of cultural movement and material endurance.
“This exhibition is a meditation on belonging and the stories that objects carry,” de Waal said. “Porcelain, to me, is a way to speak across cultures and time.”
The exhibition is cocurated by Melinda McCurdy, curator of British art; Phillip E. Bloom, June and Simon K.C. Li Curator of the Chinese Garden and director of the Center for East Asian Garden Studies; and Robert Hori, associate director of cultural programs.
Inside the Huntington Art Gallery’s Small Library, de Waal has curated a library of poetry, bringing together stories of exile, often the poets’ own. Many are in translation, framing language itself as a form of migration. The books are held within a table topped with porcelain slip and gold, into which de Waal has written a text on sanctuary, referencing the words of Chinese poet Bei Dao (b. 1949), who has spent much of his life in exile. The room once housed a portion of Henry E. and Arabella Huntington’s book collection.
Nearby, in the gallery’s white marble hall, de Waal’s benches, which are made of Kilkenny stone, invite visitors to sit and engage in quiet contemplation.
In the dining room, de Waal presents restored 18th-century Meissen plates, which were looted by the Nazis and subsequently damaged during the Allied bombing of Dresden in World War II. The plates have been repaired using the traditional Japanese art of kintsugi, in which fractured pieces are mended with urushi lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. Instead of hiding imperfections, kintsugi honors the history of fragile objects and celebrates their endurance.
On the second floor of the gallery, de Waal’s newly created vitrine with Wedgwood shards is in dialogue with The Huntington’s renowned collection of Sèvres porcelain, emphasizing the migration of materials and ideas across continents and centuries.
“De Waal reframes our historic spaces by making surprising connections between the past and the present,” McCurdy said. “He invites us to think differently about what it means to collect, preserve, and interpret objects across histories shaped by movement.”
De Waal is the author of The White Road: Journey into an Obsession (2015), an intimate portrait of his 40-plus years working with porcelain. The book describes his journeys around the world to places that tell the story of porcelain’s creation.
In this installation, de Waal traces the thousand-year evolution of porcelain, pairing shards and full vessels from China, Korea, Southeast Asia, Russia, Germany, Austria, Britain, and America with his own contemporary vessels. Selections from his personal library—including texts on porcelain and of Chinese poetry—create a quiet space for contemplation.
“De Waal’s installation doesn’t just recount porcelain’s history; it invites us to consider how objects carry ideas across time and geography, connecting distant cultures,” Bloom said.
For this installation, de Waal constructed a pavilion from charred oak as an invitation and appeal to pause, look deeply, and gather one’s thoughts. The pavilion—meant to serve as a poem in praise of shadow and light—recalls de Waal’s early apprenticeship in Japan, where he encountered sadō, or tea ceremony.
In this installation, a Kilkenny stone bench invites visitors to sit and look through the white shoji doors of the Marsh Tea House, where two installations of de Waal’s black porcelain vessels can be observed amid the shadows.
“The pavilion offers a gentle reminder to slow down and step away from the busyness of daily life,” Hori said. “It is a place for introspection amid the beauty and transience of the garden.”
Audio Guide and Programs
To deepen the experience, a digital audio guide features conversations between de Waal and cultural historian Josh Kun, professor at USC and MacArthur Fellow. The audio guide also explores the exhibition’s themes and historical layers with musical and poetic interludes.
Several public programs in June 2026 will accompany the exhibition, including:
- Edmund de Waal in Conversation with Christina Nielsen, moderated by Kun and followed by a book signing
- Youth Summit on Resilience, a daylong conference exploring Jewish, Asian American, and Los Angeles experiences of displacement and cultural survival
Additional programs in 2026—including a music series, curated by Kun, on themes of loss, exile, and restoration—will be announced later.
Illustrated Companion Book
An illustrated companion book to the exhibition, featuring a new text by de Waal, alongside an anthology of other voices, will be published by The Huntington in June 2026.
About Edmund de Waal
Edmund de Waal (b. 1964) is an acclaimed author and ceramist. Both his artistic and written practice have broken new ground through their critical engagement with the history and potential of ceramics, as well as with architecture, music, dance, and poetry. De Waal continually investigates themes of diaspora, memorial, and materiality with his interventions and artworks, which are made for diverse spaces and museums worldwide, including the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam; Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire, England; the Musée Nissim de Camondo in Paris; the British Museum in London; the Frick Collection in New York; Museo Ebraico in Venice; Schindler House in Los Angeles; Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna; and the V&A Museum in London.
De Waal is also renowned for his bestselling family memoir, The Hare with Amber Eyes (2010), and The White Road (2015). His most recent book, Letters to Camondo, was published in 2021.
He was awarded the Windham-Campbell Prize for nonfiction by Yale University in 2015. In 2021, he was a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and awarded a CBE (commander of the Order of the British Empire) for his services to art. He received the Isamu Noguchi Award in 2023 and the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2024. He lives and works in London.
Generous support for this exhibition is provided by Mei-Lee Ney, the Douglas and Eunice Erb Goodan Endowment, the Robertson Family in memory of Susan W. Robertson, Louise and John Bryson, Maria Hummer-Tuttle and Robert Tuttle, and Dorian Huntington Davis. Additional funding is provided by June and Simon K.C. Li, the LLWW Foundation, an anonymous donor, Suzanne Deal Booth, Sandra Gering, and Alan Kennedy and Joan Simon.
