Zhan Wang

SAN FRANCISCO -- A double-edged joke runs through Zhan Wang's exhibition at the Asian Art Museum here. It's about turning rocks into gold. One of many Chinese contemporary artists who have found global fame and fortune in the post-Mao boom, the Beijing sculptor has struck it rich by making stainless-steel facsimiles of the oddly weathered stones known as scholars' rocks.

SAN FRANCISCO -- A double-edged joke runs through Zhan Wang's exhibition at the Asian Art Museum here. It's about turning rocks into gold. One of many Chinese contemporary artists who have found global fame and fortune in the post-Mao boom, the Beijing sculptor has struck it rich by making stainless-steel facsimiles of the oddly weathered stones known as scholars' rocks.

East West Bank has purchased a $2-million collection of Chinese contemporary art for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, but you'll have to go to the bank's headquarters in Pasadena to see it. Under terms of an unusual agreement, MOCA curators selected 11 paintings, drawings, sculptures and photographs by six artists -- including leading figures such as Xu Bing and Cai Guo-Qiang -- and the bank paid for them.