SAKE TASTING AT THE GAMBLE HOUSE
Friday, March 20, 2026, from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Pricing: $40 Members | $50 Non-Members
Must be 21 and over to attend. Valid identification required at check-in.
Sake, or rice wine, was first consumed in Japan over 2,000 years ago, centuries before the introduction of tea to the islands. The drink was first used in religious rituals to honor the gods, but gradually it came to play a more important role in the secular lives of the Japanese and, for centuries it has been enjoyed, both hot and cold, by all levels of Japanese society.
Meher McArthur, Japanese art historian and former Curator of East Asian Art at Pacific Asia Museum, Pasadena, CA will present a brief slide lecture discussing the cultural history of sake, some of the art forms that have evolved around the drink, its production methods and the correct ways to drink it. The lecture will be followed by a guided sampling of several different kinds of sake available in the US.
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Meher McArthur is an Asian art historian and curator specializing Japanese art. She has served as Curator of East Asian Art at Pacific Asia Museum, Creative Director for the Storrier Stearns Japanese Garden, Academic Curator for Scripps College and Art and Cultural Director for Japan House in Los Angeles. She has also Asian art at the University of Southern California, Scripps College, and Claremont Graduate University and at various museums in Southern California. Since 2010, McArthur has curated traveling exhibitions for International Arts & Artists (IA&A) including Washi Transformed: New Expressions in Japanese Paper and Kimono: Garment, Canvas, and Artistic Muse. Her publications include Gods and Goblins: Folk Paintings from Otsu (PAM, 1999), Reading Buddhist Art (Thames & Hudson, 2002) and The Arts of Asia (Thames & Hudson, 2005), An ABC of What Art Can Be (Getty Museum, 2010), New Expressions in Origami Art (Tuttle, 2017), and a memoir, A Japanese Art Journey: A Curator’s Memoir of Polka Dot Pumpkins, Paper Dolls and Woodblock Prints (Tuttle, 2025). She lives in Pasadena, CA.
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