January–December 2018


January February MarchAprilMay • June • July August • September • October • November • December

The following is an archive of past Japanese Art Society of America lectures and special events. Go to JASA Programs for our most current schedule.


January

Thursday, January 11, 6 p.m.

The Marymount School
1026 Fifth Ave., between 83rd and 84th Streets
New York, NY

20th-Century Kimono Textiles and Design

Join a conversation between noted textile expert Andrea Aranow, of Textile Hive, and JASA board member John Resig while screening images of modern kimono from late Meiji through mid-Showa and hand-ainted, life-size zuan produced for cloth to be colored using the figurative technique of yuzen and kata-yuzen. We‘ll look at the fascinating story of how tastes changed during the first six decades of the 20th century, hoping this will serve as a companion to Terry Milhaupt‘s excellent scholarly research. Additionally, there will be further discussion about the role that the kimono played in Japanese art and the impact that art and culture (such as ukiyo-e and kabuki theater) had on the designs of the kimonos.

Andrea Aranow, a JASA member for several years, has a long history playing with textile design questions and answers. She earned a degree at Brown University in cultural history and immediately struck out to create some East Village culture of her own: “funky” snakeskin clothes for the stars of the moment and their followers, then on to reside and build museum collections of “ clothing in Peru, minority China, and finally Japan. Returning to the US in 1987, she ran a commercial business supplying “exotic” textile ideas to industry.

John Resig is a Japanese print collector and creator of the Ukiyo-e.org Japanese woodblock print database. He‘s also a board member of the Japanese Art Society of America and is a Visiting Researcher at Ritsumeikan University.


February

Sunday, February 4, 11 a.m.–3 p.m.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art
5905 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA

Polished to Perfection: Japanese Cloisonne

Courtesy of the Southern California chapter of the International Netsuke Society, JASA members are invited to visit the Bushell Collection of netsuke in LACMA’s Pavilion for Japanese Art, including a lecture on “The Curator’s Eye: Exploring Netsuke through LACMA’s Exhibitions” by Curator of Japanese Art Hollis Goodall. The Bushell Collection is one of the finest in the country, and will not be viewable after February 4, when the Pavilion closes until 2023 for the renovation of the eastern section of the LACMA campus. For the full schedule of events and to sign up, please contact JASA member Sue Romaine at sromaine@sbcglobal.net.


Wednesday, February 7, 6 p.m.

The Marymount School
1026 Fifth Avenue, between 83rd and 84th Streets

New York, NY

The Sedgwick Shōtoku

Rachel Saunders, Ph.D., Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Associate Curator of Asian Art at the Harvard Art Museums, will speak on the oldest extant sculpture, Prince Shōtoku at Age Two,  known as “The Sedgwick Shōtoku” (ca. 1292). This extraordinary sculpture of the putative founder of Buddhism in Japan, Shōtoku Taishi (d. 622), contained a rich cache of almost 70 diverse objects that collectively present a lively challenge to conventional wisdom concerning Buddhist sectarian practice in Kamakura period Japan. Widely considered the finest surviving example of sculpture depicting the infant prince, the Sedgwick Shōtoku is one of a class of diminutive yet highly charismatic sculptures of Shōtoku that emerged in the late 13th to early 14th century amid a pervasive atmosphere of intense anxiety over the impossibility of spiritual salvation. Working both literally and figuratively from the inside out, this presentation presents the very latest research into the sculpture currently being conducted at the Harvard Art Museums.

Dr. Saunders was appointed to her current position at the Harvard Art Museums in 2015. Educated at the Universities of Oxford, London, and Tokyo, Saunders gained her Ph.D. in Japanese Art History from Harvard University and is a specialist in medieval narrative painting. Prior to joining the Harvard Art Museums, she was awarded the Ittleson Fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. From 2004 to 2011, she was Curatorial Research Associate in Department of Arts of Asia, Africa and Oceania at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.


Saturday and Sunday, February 10–11

Los Angeles Fine Print Fair
Pasadena Hilton Hotel
168 S. Los Robles Ave.


Storrier Stearns Japanese Garden
270 Arlington Drive

Pasadena, CA

JASA Excursion to Pasadena

On Saturday afternoon, JASA members will visit the The LA Fine Print Fair. Egenolf Gallery and The Tolman Collection are among the dealers showing at the fair, which is open from noon to 6 p.m both days. Hollis Goodall, curator of Japanese Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, will meet us at 5:30 p.m. and discuss some of the prints at the fair. A group dinner at a nearby restaurant will follow.

On Sunday, independent curator Meher McArthur will take the group through the historic Storrier Stearns Japanese Garden, as well as the exhibition in the garden’s En Gallery on Brushstrokes and Blooms: The Calligraphy and Ikebana of Shizuko Greenblatt.

In addition, Pasadena is home to museums, antique shops and galleries, some specializing in Japanese art. The USC Pacific Asia Museum has recently reopened after a multiyear renovation. The permanent collection contains some Japanese paintings and objects.  One of the largest antiquarian book fairs on the West Coast, The 51st California International Antiquarian Book Fair, is also taking place the same weekend at the Pasadena Convention Center, next to the Pasadena Hilton. Exhibitors include the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of Japan.

About 40 minutes away, the Getty Center in Los Angeles is exhibiting a collection of Edo-period lacquer boxes originally belonging to Queen Marie Antoinette of France. A rare opportunity to see these boxes in the United States, they are usually housed in the Palace of Versailles museum


March

Tuesdays, March 6, 13 and 20, 11 a.m.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium
1000 Fifth Ave.
New York, NY

Three-Part Lecture Series: The Poetry of Nature in Japanese Art

John T. Carpenter, the Mary Griggs Burke Curator of Japanese Art at The Met, will talk on the perennial intermingling of art and literature in Japanese culture in this lecture series, which focuses on painting, poetry and calligraphy in the Edo period (1615–1868). An era when traditional forms of Japanese and Chinese poetry were still cherished, the Edo years also saw the revival of the witty 31-syllable kyōka and the emergence of the 17-syllable haiku, intended to evoke images of their own.

Drawing on the Canon of Chinese Poetry in Literati Painting
Tuesday, March 6, 11 a.m.
Ancient Japanese Courtly Verse in Edo-Period Paintings
Tuesday, March 13, 11 a.m.
Popular Verse in Late-Edo Painting, Prints and Books
Tuesday, March 20, 11 a.m.

Sunday, March 18, 11 a.m.

Japan Society Auditorium
333 East 47th St.
New York, NY

Hard Bodies: Contemporary Japanese Lacquer Sculpture

Before the annual meeting of the Japanese Art Society of America, Andreas Marks, Ph.D., the Head of the Japanese and Korean Art Department at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, will introduce Hard Bodies: Contemporary Japanese Lacquer Sculpture, on view at the Minneapolis Institute of Art until June 24, 2018.

The toxic sap from the lacquer tree has been used to make objects resilient and beautiful in East Asia for several thousand years. Until the modern period, lacquer was principally used for articles for daily or ceremonial use and presentation, such as wine vessels and document cases. In the early 1950s, artists revolutionized this utilitarian tradition by creating the first sculptures made from lacquer. The subject of a new exhibition, a small but enterprising circle of artists, all born since 1959, has pushed the medium in entirely new directions by creating conceptually innovative, large-scale works that superbly exploit the natural characteristics of this medium.

From 2008 to 2013,  Dr. Andreas Marks was the Director and Chief Curator of the Clark Center for Japanese Art and Culture in California. He has a Ph.D. from Leiden University in the Netherlands and a master’s degree in East Asian Art History from the University of Bonn. A specialist of Japanese woodblock prints, he is the author of 14 books. His Publishers of Japanese Prints: A Compendium is the first comprehensive reference work in any language on Japanese print publishers. In 2014 he received an award from the International Ukiyo-e Society in Japan for his research.


April

Friday, April 13, 5:30 p.m.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Ave.
New York, NY
(Meet at the Tour Group Desk at the Main Entrance)

The Poetry of Nature: Edo Paintings from the Fishbein-Bender Collection

John Carpenter, The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Mary Griggs Burke Curator of Japanese Art, will be leading a JASA tour of the new exhibition, The Poetry of Nature: Edo Paintings from the Fishbein-Bender Collection. This exhibition highlights the outstanding collection of Edo-period paintings of various schools built by collectors Estelle P. Bender and her late husband, T. Richard Fishbein. To add a modern twist, contemporary Japanese ceramics from their collection will be juxtaposed with the paintings, while works in various formats and media from The Met collection will provide further context. The celebration of the natural world will serve as a unifying theme, and the intertwined relationship between poetry and the pictorial arts—so fundamental to Japanese tradition—will be a particular focus of the exhibition


May

Thursday,  May 3, 2 p.m.

The Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Pkwy
Brooklyn, NY
(Meet at the Information Desk at the Main Entrance)

The Brooklyn Museum: Behind the Scenes

The Brooklyn Museum houses an important collection of Japanese art that has been largely hidden as the museum works to re-open the Arts of Japan gallery. Select holdings were displayed at the Japan Society in the 2014 exhibition Points of Departure: Treasures of Japan from the Brooklyn Museum, but there are many other wonderful pieces that were not in the show. Please join us as Joan Cummins, Lisa and Bernard Selz Senior Curator of Asian Art, brings out a selection of folding screens, paintings and objects from the storerooms for an intimate viewing. In honor of the museum’s exhibition “Infinite Blue,” Joan will also pull Brooklyn’s aizuri-e prints, including some wonderful rarities. Participants might want to make a day of it, visiting the Brooklyn Botanic Garden next door and seeing the new Arts of Korea installation at the Museum, as well as the David Bowie show (advance ticket purchase is strongly recommended for the Bowie show).


June

Thursday, June 28 –Friday, June 29

Carnegie Museum of Art
4400 Forbes Ave.
Pittsburgh, PA
(Members will meet at the museum at 2 p.m.)

JASA excursion to Pittsburgh

Akemi May, assistant curator of decorative and fine arts at the Carnegie Museum of Art, will lead JASA members through the exhibition Hiroshige’s Tōkaidō Road, a complete set of 55 prints from the first Hōeidō edition of Hiroshige’s 53 Stations of the Tōkaidō, created between 1831 and 1834. This series depicts the spectacular landscapes and fascinating characters encountered on the journey from Edo (now Tokyo) to the Imperial Capital of Kyoto.

The next morning, we will visit two private collections in Pittsburgh, one with a particular concentration on shin hanga master Hiroshi Yoshida (1876–1950). The other, JASA member Lila Penchansky’s own collection, focuses on prints of the 20th and 21st century. On a recent trip to Japan, meeting with many artists, she was able to spend time with technical masters of their respective media (woodblock and mezzotint) Akira Kurosaki and Katsunori Hamanishi and will share insights with us.


July

July 16, 2 p.m.

Koichi Yanagi Oriental Fine Arts
17 East 71st St., 4th Floor
New York, NY
(212) 744-5577

Please join us for a private visit to Koichi Yanagi’s special exhibition of Flowers and Flower Containers (July 14 to 23). This display includes antique and contemporary Japanese flower containers by various artists, with flower arrangements by Kan Asakura. We have arranged a conversation with Mr. Asakura, who will discuss his approach to the art of flower arranging.


August

Friday, August 24

Getty Center
1200 Getty Center Dr.
Los Angeles, CA

Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Brown Auditorium
5905 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA

Visits to a Japanese lacquer exhibition, lecture and a private collection

Join JASA in Los Angeles for a very special day devoted to Japanese lacquer! On Friday, August 24, we will begin at the Getty Center, where Associate Curator for Sculpture and Decorative Arts Jeffrey Weaver will take us through an extraordinary and rarely seen collection of Japanese lacquer boxes on loan from the Palace of Versailles Museum. The objects in this small but exquisite show had been in the personal collection of Queen Marie Antoinette of France and were among her most prized possessions. They are rarely exhibited, and the Getty is the only museum in the United States to show them.

At 2 p.m., at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), we will attend a special lecture, Collecting Japanese Lacquer in Eighteenth-Century France and the Taste for Incense Utensils, by Dr. Monika Bincsik, Diane and Arthur Abbey Assistant Curator for Japanese Decorative Arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The lecture is open to the public, and all are invited to attend. Dr. Bincsik is a renowned expert on Japanese lacquer who has researched and written extensively on the topic. She also has led special behind-the-scenes tours of the Met’s Japanese lacquer collection for JASA members.


September

Wednesday, September 12, 6 p.m.

Dai Ichi Arts, Ltd.
18 East 64th St.
New York, NY

Gallery Visit to Dai Ichi Arts

Dai Ichi Arts, Ltd., is pleased to host a gallery visit to its inaugural exhibition of the contemporary Japanese ceramic artist Hiruma Kazuyo (昼馬和代). The exhibition, Hiruma Kazuyo: Memories of Water and Earth, will feature a series of works that highlight Hiruma’s investigation of how memory and erosion come forth in aquatic and terrestrial forms. Ceramic sculptures depicting water and earth inspire nuanced explorations of how these two natural forces interact with time. Hiruma began her artistic career in 1976, when she worked under the guidance of ceramic artists Sugaki and Hisano Mizuno in Osaka. Prior to committing to her ceramic practice, Sakai City-born Hiruma worked as a graphic designer for a decade. Hiruma founded her own kiln in 1988, and her ceramic work exploring natural phenomena has since exhibited and received awards internationally.


Thursday, September 13, 5–8 p.m.

Miyako Yoshinaga
541 W. 27th St., Suite 204 (between 10th and 11th Aves.)
New York, NY 10001

Onishi Gallery and Seizan Gallery
521 W. 26th St., lower floor (between 10th and 11th Aves.)
New York, NY

Visits to three galleries

Miyako Yoshinga will present Trade Winds, a solo exhibition of photographic works by New York-based artist Yojiro Imasaka, who will speak about his work from 5–5:30 p.m. Onishi Gallery will host Faces of the Moon, an exhibition by Japanese photographer Koshu Endo, and Carving White Translucence, a solo exhibition of Peter Hamann, the Nebraska-born ceramic artist. After operating for 22 years in Tokyo, Seizan Gallery opens its first overseas location in New York with Nihong: Contemporary Art of Japan. The show introduces seven emerging Japanese painters who carry on a traditional practice deeply rooted in Japanese art history, yet with a decidedly new take. On Thursday, September 13, the gallery will be open until 8 p.m. and welcomes JASA members.


October

Monday, October 15, 9:25 a.m.

Japanese Garden at Kykuit
200 Lake Road
Pocantico Hills
, NY

Garden tour and tea ceremony

On this full-day excursion with Curator and JASA Board Member Cynthia Altman, JASA members will tour the Shoin-style teahouse designed by Yoshimura Junzo and take part in a tea ceremony. Urasenke Tea Master Yoshihiro Terazono will join us once again to demonstrate the details of this ancient tradition. JASA member Tomoko Urabe will participate as tea-ceremony assistants. This will be followed by a bento lunch (included in the tour fee).


November

Thursday, November 1, 11 a.m.

Newark Museum
49 Washington St.
Newark, NJ 07102

Kimono Refashioned

Dr. Katherine Paul, curator of Asian art at the Newark Museum, will lead the tour of this exhibition showcasing more than 40 garments created by more than 30 Japanese, European and American designers from the Kyoto Costume Institute and the Newark Museum, The exhibition highlights not only spectacular couture gowns, innovative men’s wear, shoes with a sense of humor and ready-to-wear that tells a story, but also significant paintings, prints and textiles that reflect and resonate with these style trends.


Thursday, November 8, 6 p.m.

Erik Thomsen Gallery
23 East 67th St., 4th Floor
New York, NY

Visual Poetry and Model Calligraphy in 16th-Century Japan

Tomoko Sakomura, Professor of Art History at Swarthmore College, will discuss the ways text, image and media interact in representations of 31-syllable waka poetry in the context of 16th-century Japan. From single poems to anthologies, waka appeared in various media, and were coveted and commissioned by warriors and courtiers alike. This lecture will explore the embedded attempts to conjure the past and delight the present.

Professor Sakomura specializes in the visual culture of late medieval Japan and the relationships between text and image in Japanese art and design. She received a B.A. in Art History and Aesthetics from Keiō University, Tokyo, and a master’s and Ph.D. in Art History and Archaeology from Columbia University, New York. Her publications include “Changing Hands: Teika, Poetry, and Calligraphy in Sixteenth-Century Japan” appearing in Around Chigusa: Tea and the Arts of Sixteenth-Century Japan (Princeton University Press, 2017), Poetry as Image: The Visual Culture of Waka in Sixteenth-Century Japan (Brill, 2016), “Japan: 1400–1600” and “Japan: 1600–1750, appearing in History of Design: Decorative Arts and Material Culture, 1400-2000 (Yale University Press, 2013).


Thursday-Sunday, November 15–18

Fullerton Hall
Art Institute of Chicago
111 S. Michigan Ave.
Chicago, IL

Symposium at the Art Institute of Chicago and visits to three private collections

Sponsored by The Japan Foundation, the one-day symposium, Interpretations of Beauty in Ukiyo-e, will explore the layers of meaning and historical contexts that inform ukiyo-e paintings, particularly the masterpieces of the Weston Collection, which will be on view at the Institute. Daytime talks will begin at 10 a.m. and conclude at 4 p.m., with time afterward to view the exhibition Painting the Floating World: Ukiyo-e Masterpieces in the Weston Collection (November 4, 2018–January 27, 2019). Speakers include John Carpenter, Metropolitan Museum of Art; Julie Davis, University of Pennsylvania; Amy Stanley, Northwestern University; Tanya Uyeda, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and Sebastian Izzard, independent scholar, New York. At 6 p.m., keynote speaker Timothy Clark will give the annual Trapp Japanese Art Lecture.


Thursday, November 29, 2 p.m. (meet at the museum’s Information Desk at the Main Entrance at 1:45 P.M.); second session 3:30 p.m. (meet at 3:15 p.m.)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Ave.
New York, NY

Tour of The Asian Paintings Conservation Studio at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Jennifer Perry, The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Mary and James Wallach Family Conservator of Japanese Art, will host a visit to The Asian Paintings Conservation Studio. She will discuss a number of artworks, including Gion Nankai, Chinese Poems for the Twelve Months (late 1730s, pair of six-panel folding screens); Yamada Dōan, Melons (late 16th century, hanging scroll); Kokan Shiren, Poem in Chinese about Sugar (14th century, hanging scroll); and Suizan Miki, Monkeys (20th century, pair of six-panel folding screens).

Jennifer joined the Met in 2010 to oversee treatment and preservation of the Japanese paintings collections. After completing her M.A. in art history and an advanced certificate in conservation at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, she received her training at the Yamaguchi Bokunindo Studio and the Oka Bokkodo Co. Ltd. in Japan, where she worked on Designated Cultural Properties. Prior to joining the Met, she worked at the Cleveland Museum of Art where, as Associate Conservator, she established the studio for Asian paintings conservation.


December

Wednesday, December 5, 6 p.m.

Columbia University
Room 807 (8th Floor of Schermerhorn Hall)
1180 Amsterdam Ave.
New York, NY

Rosetsu: Ferocious Brush

This lecture by Matthew P. McKelway, Ph.D., will focus on the exhibition of works by Nagasawa Rosetsu that McKelway co-curated this autumn at the Rietberg Museum, Zürich, with Khanh Trinh, Ph.D., the museum’s Curator of Japanese Art.

McKelway, Atsumi Professor of Japanese Art History at Columbia University, specializes in the history of Japanese painting. He has written extensively on urban representation in screen paintings of Kyoto (rakuchū rakugai zu) and the development of genre painting in early modern Japan. His research interests extend also to Kano school painting, Rimpa, the folding fan, and individualist painters in 18th-century Kyoto, all the subjects of books and numerous articles. In his writing and teaching he has sought to understand Japanese paintings according to the physical and cultural contexts of their creators in order to discover the motivations, whether political, personal, literary, or philosophical, that drove them to make pictures in particular ways.

This event is co-hosted by JASA and the Mary Griggs Burke Center for Japanese Art, Columbia University, which will hold a reception after the lecture, at about 7 p.m., in the foyer outside the new lecture hall, which is located next to Mary Griggs Burke Center for Japanese Art.


Friday, December 7–Saturday, December 8

Portland Museum of Art
1219 SW Park Ave.
Portland, OR
(503) 226-2811
portlandartmuseum.org

Two-day visit to Portland, Oregon

JASA members are invited to participate in a special two-day excursion in connection with two new exhibitions and a symposium at the Portland Art Museum. Our program begins at 1:30 p.m. on Friday, December 7, at the museum, where curators will take us through two exciting new exhibitions: Three Masters of Abstraction, with nearly 50 prints by three prominent post-war Japanese artists, Hagiwara Hideo, Ida Shōichi and Takahashi Rikio, who embraced Western-inspired abstraction as a means for expressing fundamentally Japanese themes; and Poetic Imagination in Japanese Art: Selections from the Collection of Mary and Cheney Cowles, including paintings and calligraphy from one of the finest private collections in North America. Spanning the 8th through 20th centuries, many of the works are unveiled to the public for the first time here.

A two-day international symposium in connection with Poetic Imagination will be held in the museum starting at 6 p.m. on Friday, with a keynote lecture by Joshua Mostow, Ph.D., Professor of Pre-Modern Japanese Literature and Art at the University of British Columbia. After the lecture, there will be an optional group dinner for JASA participants. (Please let group leader Wilson Grabill know if you are interested in participating in the dinner. A flat fee will be collected for the dinner, depending on the number of participants.) The symposium will continue on Saturday from 9:15 a.m. to 5 p.m., followed by a reception for the presenters and participants. Dinner that evening is on your own.

For those staying on to Sunday, you should not miss the renowned Portland Japanese Garden, one of the finest in the U.S. In the garden’s Garden’s Pavilion Gallery and Tanabe Gallery, Manga Hokusai Manga: Approaching the Master’s Compendium from the Perspective of Contemporary Comics features manga woodblock prints by Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849), juxtaposed with work by top modern manga artists. Portland is the only U.S. venue of this show, which was organized in Japan. The garden and gallery are open on Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.


Monday, December 10, 6 p.m

The Marymount School
1026 Fifth Avenue, between 83rd and 84th Streets

New York, New York

JASA Holiday Party and Special Guest Lecture

Dr. Anne Nishimura Morse will speak on The Legacy of the Gilded-Age Bostonians: Japanese Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Dr. Morse is the William and Helen Pounds Senior Curator of Japanese Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. A graduate of Radcliffe College, she received her M.A. from Harvard University in East Asian Regional Studies and Ph.D. in the History of Art and Architecture at Harvard.

During her more than 30-year tenure at the Museum, Dr. Morse has organized many critically-acclaimed exhibitions including The Dawn of the Floating World 1650-1765: Early Ukiyoe Treasures from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Royal Academy of London, 2001), Drama and Desire: Japanese Paintings from the Floating World 1690 – 1850 (2006) and Takashi Murakami: Lineage of Eccentrics (2017). She was also responsible for The Art of the Japanese Postcard: The Leonard A. Lauder Collection at the MFA (2004) and In the Wake: Japanese Photographers Respond to 3-11 (2015). The catalogs for both The Dawn of the Floating World and The Art of the Japanese Postcard were cited by The New York Times in its annual list of the best art books of the year; In the Wake was awarded the Japan Photographic Association best foreign exhibition of the year.

From 1992 through 2006, in collaboration with teams of scholars from Japan, Dr. Morse completed a 14-year project to re-catalog the Museum’s renowned collections of Japanese painting and sculpture—the largest of such holdings outside Japan. The surveys have resulted in numerous publications and exhibitions, including one devoted to masterpieces from the MFA’ s Japanese collections at the Tokyo National Museum in 2012.

Dr. Morse has been a visiting professor at Amherst College and Mount Holyoke College and a visiting lecturer at Harvard University. She currently serves as the co-chair of the Arts Dialogue Committee for the United States-Japan Conference on Cultural and Educational Interchange (CULCON), which advises the U.S. and Japanese governments on arts policy.