January–December 2023
January • February • March • April • May • 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-Sponsored Events for our most current schedule.
December
Wednesday, December 6, 11 a.m. –12:15 p.m. EDT
OR Thursday, December 7, 3–4:15 p.m. EDT
Asia Society Museum
725 Park Avenue (at 70th Street)
New York, NY
asiasociety.org/new-york
Meiji Modern: Fifty Years of New Japan
A special visit to the Meiji Modern exhibition has been organized by the Japanese Art Society of America to celebrate JASA’s 50th Anniversary. Our tour guide will be exhibition co-curator Bradley Bailey, Ting Tsung and Wei Fong Chao Curator of Asian Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Thursday, December 14, 5 p.m. EDT
Seeing the Trees: Ecology and Imagination in Japanese Art
Celebrating JASA’s 50th Anniversary, this live Zoom webinar is presented by Dr. Rachel Saunders, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Curator of Asian Art at the Harvard Art Museums. What good is art history in our era of climate catastrophe? What productive work can the study of Japanese art do in the ground between care of the planet and visual art? Researching, exhibiting, conserving, and collecting Japanese art are activities usually undertaken in settings far removed from the living bodies and environments out of which the works themselves were produced. What are the implications of having separated ourselves from this knowledge historically, and the dangers of continuing to do so now? This talk asks how encounters with non-human beings—including trees, plants and animals—in Japanese art can guide us in the stewardship of the metaphorical forest of richly interconnected actions and relationships that have the capacity to help us envision our world differently.
Webinar posted: View our December 14 lecture Seeing the Trees: Ecology and Imagination in Japanese Art, with Dr. Rachel Saunders.
Wednesday, November 8, 5 p.m. EDT
Exhibiting Meiji Art and Culture: Curatorial Perspectives
Celebrating JASA’s 50th Anniversary, this live Zoom webinar features three curators who offer their perspectives on Meiji art and culture. The art of the Meiji era (1868-1912) was the first to be consciously collected as “contemporary Japanese art” in the United States. In this event, Takurō Tsunoda (curator at the Kanagawa Prefectural Museum of Cultural History), in conversation with Bradley M. Bailey and Chelsea Foxwell (co-curators of the JASA 50th anniversary exhibition Meiji Modern: Fifty Years of New Japan currently on view at Asia Society New York), will reflect on recent curatorial interpretations of the art and culture of the Meiji era.
Following individual presentations on Meiji Modern and the exhibition The Development of Visual Culture in the Meiji Era recently held at the Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art in Nagoya, Professors Tsunoda, Bailey and Foxwell will discuss their challenges, goals and future aspirations for exhibiting Meiji art.
Webinar posted: View our November 8 lecture Exhibiting Meiji Art and Culture: Curatorial Perspectives..
Wednesday, November 15, 2 p.m. EDT
Print Center New York
535 West 24th Street
New York, NY
A Model Workshop: Margaret Lowengrund and the Contemporaries
This in-person tour features the Print Center‘s current exhibition A Model Workshop with co-curator Christina Weyl, who will speak particularly about the Japanese printmakers involved with the workshop/gallery in the 1950s. This is the first exhibition and publication to explore the understudied work and impact of Margaret Lowengrund (1902–57). Co-curated by Christina Weyl and Lauren Rosenblum, it is focused on expanding histories of mid-century art in the United States, and specifically in New York City. Lowengrund was the first woman to open her own printmaking workshop in the United States; a visionary leader, organizer and critic within the mid-twentieth century New York printmaking community; and a driving force behind the revival of artistic lithography.
A Model Workshop brings together a diverse selection of objects, including 79 prints, one sculpture, and various ephemera, and unfolds chronologically via three themes through which the exhibition is structured: Lowengrund’s own printmaking and writing practices; the activity at The Contemporaries; and the workshop-gallery’s merger with New York’s Pratt Institute and transition into the Pratt Graphic Art Center (PGAC).
Within this broader narrative, there is a vibrant story about sōsaku hanga printmakers who became involved with Lowengrund and The Contemporaries or, later, PGAC. The exhibition features work by Hasegawa Saburō, who had a solo exhibition at The Contemporaries in 1954; Munakata Shikō, who twice gave demonstrations at PGAC in 1959 and 1965; Uchima Ansei, who taught woodblock printmaking on the faculty of PGAC; and Izumi Shigeru who specialized in lithography and had a residency at PGAC.
Financial support from the Rockefeller Foundation and the Japan Society facilitated much of this international cultural exchange. The exhibition catalogue features an essay by Kuwahara Noriko, which charts the many instances of exchange between Japanese printmakers and The Contemporaries and PGAC, highlighting the mutual benefits to Lowengrund and the artists she supported. The working list of artists includes Hasegawa Saburo, Yoshida Hodaka, Yoshida Toshi, Saito Kiyoshi, Sekino Jun’ichiro, Munakata Shiko, Izumi Shigeru, Mori Yasu, Kobashi Yasuhide, Yoshida Masaji, Minami Keiko, Matsubara Naoko, Uchima Ansei, Uchima Toshiko,and Wakita Kazu.
October
Tuesday, October 3–January 7, 2024
Asia Society Museum
725 Park Avenue (at 70th Street)
New York, NY
asiasociety.org/new-york
Meiji Modern: Fifty Years of New Japan
JASA’s 50th anniversary exhibition, Meiji Modern: Fifty Years of New Japan, opens on October 3 at Asia Society Museum in New York, before traveling to the Smart Museum at the University of Chicago and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in 2024.
This exhibition reevaluates a seminal era of turmoil, creativity, and transformation in Japan spanning the mid-nineteenth to early-twentieth centuries. Comprising nearly 80 works—including paintings, prints, photographs, sculptural works, and objects in various media, such as enamel, lacquer, embroidery, and textiles—this exhibition presents some of the finest examples of Meiji-period artworks in American collections, both public and private. Arranged around traditional Japanese motifs, such as the sea and nature, Buddhist deities, beauties, and mythical animals, Meiji Modern highlights these themes as they are transformed by the introduction of newly imported techniques, materials, and objects, surprising the viewer with works of technical virtuosity, unexpected scale, and sheer beauty.
Meiji Modern: Fifty Years of New Japan is co-curated by Bradley Bailey, Ting Tsung and Wei Fong Chao Curator of Asian Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and Chelsea Foxwell, Associate Professor of Art History, University of Chicago.
September
Monday, September 11, 12 p.m. EDT
Introduction to The Montgomery Collection: Jeffrey Montgomery in Conversation with Luigi Zeni
This special JASA live webinar focuses on The Montgomery Collection, widely regarded as the largest and finest collection of mingei (Japanese folk art) outside of Japan. Luigi Zeni, guest curator for the Dallas-based Crow Museum of Asian Art, will discuss the collection with Swiss collector Jeffrey Montgomery, who has spent over 40 years acquiring approximately 1,100 works of mingei in various media.
The conversation will focus on the exhibition Japan Form & Function: The Montgomery Collection, currently on view at the Crow Museum until April 14, 2024. This exhibition offers a glimpse of the larger collection and reflects Mr. Montgomery’s passion and interest in the purpose (i.e., function) of the objects as well as their sculptural qualities (form). The exhibition spans 5,000 years of Japanese history, from the middle Jōmon period (3500–2500 B.C.E.) to the end of the twentieth century. The discussion will be moderated by JASA board member and distinguished mingei collector David M. Kahn.
Webinar posted: View our September 11 Webinar Introduction to The Montgomery Collection: Jeffrey Montgomery in Conversation with Luigi Zeni.
Sunday, August 27, 7 p.m. EDT (Monday, August 28, 8 – 9:15 a.m., Tokyo time)
International House of Japan
5-11-16 Roppongi,
Minato-ku,Tokyo
Meiji Modern: What Women’s Education Means Then and Now
This panel discussion, held in person and online, is organized by Asia Society in Japan in connection with JASA’s exhibition Meiji Modern: Fifty Years of New Japan, which opens at Asia Society New York, October 3.
Japan took its steps to modernization 150 years ago. What was achieved then, and how is it still relevant today? The significance of education, in particular women’s education and modernization, will be discussed by Dr. Carol Gluck, George Sansom Professor of History, Columbia University; Dr. Junko Hibiya, Former President of International Christian University, and Dr. Nick Honma of Digital Museum of Japanese History in New York. The program will be moderated by Claire Chino, Asia Society Japan Founding Member.
July
Friday, July 14
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
25 Evans Way
Boston, MA
Museum of Fine Arts
465 Huntington Ave.
Boston, MA
JASA Tour of Two Boston Museums
Meiji Modern, JASA’s 50th anniversary exhibition, opens at Asia Society, New York, in October! To kick off our celebrations, we invite you to explore two Boston museums that began collecting Japanese art in the Meiji period.
At our first stop, we will meet in the lobby of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum at 12:30 p.m. for a guided tour of Japanese artwork and visit to the archives of the museum. Gardner was part of a privileged group of foreigners to visit Japan in 1883, and she kept detailed travel albums during her explorations of Japanese culture. From 1904, her interest in Japanese art and culture intensified as a result of her friendship with art historian Okakura Kakuzō (1862–1913) who became curator of Japanese and Chinese Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 1904. Gardner welcomed Okakura and artists including Yokoyama Taikan into Boston social circles to present and discuss topics on Asian art, facilitating the creation of the world-renowned collection at the MFA, Boston, today.
Attendees are encouraged to arrive early for lunch at the museum’s Cafe G before starting our 12:30 p.m. private tour, which will end with a trip to the museum’s archives pertaining to Gardner and her close relationship with Okakura.
At 3:30 p.m., we will meet in the main lobby of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Huntington Avenue entrance. Dr. Sarah Thompson, Curator of Japanese art at the MFA, will lead a tour of her special exhibition, Hokusai: Inspiration and Influence. Thanks to the popularity of the instantly recognizable Great Wave—cited everywhere from book covers and Lego sets to anime and emoji—Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) has become one of the most famous and influential artists in the world. This major exhibition organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), takes a new approach to the work of the versatile master, pairing more than 100 of his woodblock prints, paintings and illustrated books from the MFA’s renowned collection with more than 200 works by his teachers, students, rivals, and admirers.
Tuesday, July 25, 3–4 p.m.
Asia Society New York
725 Park Ave.
New York, NY
Buddha, Sage of the Shakya Clan: A JASA Tour
Curator Laura Weinstein will lead a tour of the exhibition Buddha, Sage of the Shakya Clan, which captures the mythology of the historical buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, and the “Eight Great Events” that transformed it. Most of these masterworks were collected by John D. Rockefeller III and Blanchette Rockefeller, with the help of Sherman E. Lee beginning in the mid-1950s, and was bequeathed to the Asia Society Museum in 1979. This includes an extremely rare and important manuscript that was created at Nalanda, the great Buddhist monastic learning center in Northeastern India.
Prior to her joining Asia Society Museum, Laura A. Weinstein worked as a provenance specialist, consultant, writer and Tibetan translator for galleries, auction houses and private individuals, under her own LLC. Her most recent independent work, Deities Unveiled: Himalayan Art from the Dr. John N. Loomis Collection, was published in April 2022. She has a master’s degree in Languages and Cultures of Asia from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she also worked at the Chazen Museum of Art, and a bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University, where she began her study of Buddhism and art history.
June
Friday, June 2, 2 p.m. EDT
Japan Society
333 East 47th Street ( between 1st and 2nd Avenue)
New York, NY
Japan Society Exhibition: Kyohei Inukai
Curators Tiffany Lambert and Ayaka Iida at Japan Society will lead a private tour of the new exhibition Kyohei Inukai, the first institutional solo exhibition of work by Kyohei Inukai (1913–1985), a largely unknown, yet prolific, Japanese-American artist.
Marking the most extensive exhibition to date by the artist, this presentation features over 100 works from the late 1960s through the 1980s, representing some of the last works in this artist’s career. They range from brooding abstract paintings rendered in oil to affecting sumi-e (ink painting) studies to elegantly playful silkscreens composed of bold colors and geometric shapes.
This rare presentation of an underrecognized artist’s legacy builds upon Japan Society’s ongoing mission to embrace and showcase diverse narratives of Japanese art and artists and the Japanese diaspora. The exhibition runs until June 25.
Tiffany Lambert is currently the Curator and Interim Director of Japan Society Gallery in New York and teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design. She has served as Assistant Director of Exhibitions at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, as Curatorial Assistant at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, and as the Managing Editor of PIN–UP Magazine.
Ayaka Iida is an historian and curator specializing in visual and material culture, with a particular interest in dress history. She is currently Assistant Curator at the Japan Society and has served as a curatorial intern at the Asia Society, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Japan Society and Cooper Hewitt Design Museum. Ayaka holds an MA from New York University and a BA from Waseda University.
Thursday, June 15, 1:30–3:30 p.m. EDT
Philadelphia Museum of Art
2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway
Philadelphia, PA
JASA Trip to Philadelphia Museum of Art
Tuesday, June 27, 1 p.m. EDT
Poster House Tour: Made In Japan
Jooin us at the Poster House, one of New York City’s newest museums, for a tour of Made In Japan: Japanese Poster Art. led by the exhibition’s co-curator Erin Schoneveld. This exhibition explores the cultural and political shifts within modern Japan that influenced the functions and messaging of its advertising posters, and how those posters were subsequently received by the public.
During the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–45) and World War II (1939–45), posters were designed to inspire patriotism, circulate propaganda, and encourage consumer restraint in support of the war effort. During the postwar period, however, unparalleled growth in the manufacturing sector catapulted the Japanese economy to the position of second largest in the world, creating limitless opportunities for poster advertising as Japanese corporations became household names and global brands.
Following the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and the 1970 Osaka World Expo, Japan’s international standing shifted again, emboldening Japanese artists and designers to conceive new forms of graphic media that mixed aspects of traditional Japanese aesthetics with Western design idioms. Between the 1980s and the early 21st century, Japanese posters functioned beyond the realm of the merely commercial, allowing designers to address such social issues as pollution, climate change, sustainability, nuclear disarmament, and global peace and reconciliation. The exhibition runs until September 10.
Erin Schoneveld is Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures and Director of Visual Studies at Haverford College.. Her book Shirakaba and Japanese Modernism: Art Magazines, Artistic Collectives, and the Early Avant-garde (Brill, 2019) provides a critical framework for understanding the tensions between the local and the universal that accompanied the global development of modernism.
May
Tuesday, May 9, 5 p.m. EDT
Zoom Webinar: The Material Culture of Noh
For this live Zoom webinar, Princeton University Professor Thomas Hare will speak about the origins of noh theater in Japan and, in particular, about its material culture. Noh drama has a 700-year history of continuous performances, and it has, in that time, developed a detailed body of conventions of performance that specify not only text, music and dance, but also the material culture of noh, its costumes, masks, props and even its unique stage. This talk will relate these material aspects of noh history to its thematic concerns in modern performance and their ties to historical performance.
Webinar posted: View Thomas Hare’s talk on The Material Culture of Noh.
April
Friday, April 14, 11 a.m.–3:30 p.m. PST
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
5905 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA
Japanese Art in Dialogue: A Special JASA Trip to LACMA
Join us for a very special day at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), where Japanese Art Curator and JASA member Hollis Goodall will take us through two remarkable exhibitions illustrating Japanese art in dialogue with other cultures. First we will visit The Five Directions: Lacquer Through East Asia, tracing the flow of materials and ideas throughout Japan, the Ryūkyū kingdom (Okinawa) and the broader region. With over 80 important works from LACMA’s collection, The Five Directions offers a nuanced rethinking of lacquer in East Asia, celebrating Japan, Korea, China and the Ryūkyū kingdom as meeting points as well as centers in their own right. (The exhibition was the topic of a recent JASA webinar by curator Einor Cervone. You can watch it here.)
Afterward we will visit a new and groundbreaking exhibition, Sam Francis and Japan: Emptiness Overflowing, opening April 9. In the work of American artist Sam Francis (1923–1994), Western and Eastern aesthetics engage in a profound intercultural dialogue. Francis first traveled to Japan in 1957, developing a lifelong affinity for Japanese art and culture that influenced his work. With over 60 works from LACMA’s collection and key lenders, this is the first exhibition to explore the artist’s work in relation to “ma” (the dynamic between form and non-form) and other aspects of Japanese aesthetics. It will include works by Francis in the company of historic Japanese works to illustrate stylistic priorities shared by both. Also on view are works of contemporary Japanese artists (many associated with Gutai and Mono-Ha) whom Francis knew from his extensive time in Japan in the 1960s and ’70s.
Friday, April 14, 3–4 p.m. EST
Comparative Hell: Arts of Asian Underworlds
This tour of Comparative Hell: Arts of Asian Underworlds with Adriana Proser (Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Quincy Scott Curator of Asian Art, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore) will explore a carefully studied group of outstanding ritual objects, paintings and religious sculptures that are associated with the concept of Hell in South Asian, Chinese, Korean and Japanese art. This is the first comprehensive exhibition in the United States to explore portrayals of hell across the Asian religious traditions of Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism and Islam, examining how systems of belief and the underworlds within them are manifest in the rich artistic creations of Asia.
March
Sunday, March 19, 11 a.m., 12:30 p.m. EST
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. (between 1st and 2nd Aves.)
New York, NY
Online and Live: JASA Annual Lecture and Business Meeting
JASA will kick off its 50th Anniversary with a special event: Join Felice Fischer, curator emerita, and her successor Xiaojin Wu, Luther W. Brady Curator of Japanese Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, in conversation about highlights of the museum’s Japanese collections. They will each present five significant art works from the PMA collection and preview a “wish list” item in their discussion.
This special lecture, which also is open to members and guests of Japan Society, will take place at 11:00 a.m., in the main auditorium, with coffee and tea service beginning at 10:30 a.m.. The JASA Annual Meeting will follow, conducted by President Wilson Grabill. Both events will be held in person and also streamed online using the Zoom platform.
Webinars posted: View the lecture with Felice Fischer and Xiaojin Wu highlighting the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Japanese collections. Also, our annual meeting presentation is available for viewing online, including Emily Sano’s fascinating discussion of our 50th anniversary exhibition, Meiji Modern: Fifty Years of New Japan, which opens at Asia Society Museum on Oct 3 before traveling to Chicago and Houston in 2024.
February
Tuesday, February 7, 5 p.m. EST
Webinar: Art Across Borders: Japanese Artists in the United States
Scholar Ramona Handel-Bajema, author of Art Across Borders: Japanese Artists in the United States before World War II (MerwinAsia Publishers, 2021), will discuss the wave of Japanese artists who contributed to the establishment of American Modernism, challenged notions of a Japanese aesthetic and flourished in a nation that was at times hostile and other times welcoming. In her book, Dr. Handel-Bajema has focused on five artists—Kuniyoshi Yasuo, Ishigaki Eitarō, Shimizu Toshi, Obata Chiura and Miyatake Tōyō—as emblematic of this wave of Japanese artists arriving on American shores.
Ramona Handel-Bajema holds a Ph.D. in Modern Japanese History from Columbia University. She has more than 15 years of experience working at nonprofit organizations and social enterprises, while continuing to teach and write. Currently, Dr. Handel-Bajema teaches at Columbia University at the Committee on Global Thought. She also teaches undergraduate classes at New York University, including a course on using visual media to create historical narratives and a course on understanding the political, economic, social and cultural effects of major disasters. Her recent essay “Dreaming of Mexico: Japan Discovers the Other” appeared in Capture Japan: Visual Culture and the Global Imagination from 1952 to the Present, edited by Marco Bohr and published by Bloomsbury in December 2022.
Webinar posted: View Art Across Borders: Japanese Artists in the United States Before World War II, a talk by author Ramona Handel-Bajema.
Friday–Sunday, February 17–19
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Beck Building
5601 Main St.
Houston, TX
50th Anniversary Year of JASA: A Trip to Houston, Texas
On the occasion of the opening of None Whatsoever: Zen Paintings from the Gitter-Yelen Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, please join us for a curated weekend in Houston’s renowned Museum District, focusing on this special exhibition and other key events. The exhibition is centered around some 100 masterworks from the renowned holdings of New Orleans–based collectors Kurt Gitter and Alice Yelen, many of which were recently acquired by the museum. None Whatsoever explores the origins of Zen Buddhism in Japanese painting through ink paintings and calligraphies by 18th-century Buddhist master Hakuin Ekaku (1685–1768) and other painter-monks from the 18th to the 20th centuries who expressed Zen Buddhist teachings through their art. A related selection of modern and contemporary art influenced by Zen Buddhism includes works by Robert Motherwell, John Cage, Ad Reinhardt, Takahiro Kondo and Franz Kline, among others. Dr. Yukio Lippit, Jeffrey T. Chambers and Andrea Okumura Professor of the History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University, is co-curator of the exhibition with Bradley Bailey, the Ting Tsung and Wei Fong Chao Curator of Asian Art at the MFAH.
January
January 18, 5 p.m. EST
Webinar: The Five Directions: Lacquer Through East Asia
JASA will host a special Zoom webinar on The Five Directions: Lacquer Through East Asia, with Elinor K. Cervone, PhD, Associate Curator of Asian Art at the Denver Art Museum. Dr. Cervone will reexamine narratives of lacquer development in the East Asian region, as explored in the exhibition The Five Directions: Lacquer through East Asia, which opens December 18, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).
What was it about lacquer that made it into the lifeblood of cross-regional exchange? Works ranging from mysteries like a small Ryūkyūan inrō, previously miscategorized as Japanese, to paintings by the lacquer superstar Shibata Zeshin will be discussed. Tracing lacquer’s unexpected and multidirectional journeys, we will shed light on this elusive material, equally defined by its luster and its wanderlust.
Dr. Cervone previously served as the Mozhai Foundation Curatorial Fellow in the department of Chinese and Korean Art at LACMA. She holds a B.A. from Tel Aviv University (2008) and a Ph.D. in Chinese art and literature from Harvard University (2017). She served as a visiting scholar at Academia Sinica in Taiwan (2014–15) and held an associate position in the Department of Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History, New York (2017–19). Her publications include “Art | Adrift: Curating Selves Aboard Ming-Dynasty Painting-and-Calligraphy Boats,” Archives of Asian Art (October 2019); “The Chameleon Master Adds Snake Legs: The Art and Reception of Qiu Ying” in Where Truth Lies: The Art of Qiu Ying (ca. 1495–1552) (2020), contributions to Ferrell, Ink Dreams: Selections from the Fondation INK Collection (2021), and the forthcoming digital catalogue, Her Brush: New Approaches to Gender and Agency in Japanese Art (2022).
This January lecture is dedicated to the memory of Jacqueline Avant, a collector and philanthropist who died before her time on December 1, 2021. Please see Impressions 43 Part Two, pages 58 to 75, to learn more about Jacqueline Avant.
Webinar posted: View Dr. Cervone’s lecture The Five Directions: Lacquer Through East Asia.