Lecture Videos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwtjVLoLk50 On view from April 5 through August 4, 2024, Brooklyn Museum’s exhibition of Hiroshige’s One Hundred Famous Views of Edo features new versions of the original views by the iconic Japanese artist Takashi Murakami, with photographs by Ȧlex Bueno of some of the contemporary sites of Hiroshige’s designs. This panel discussion, presented live on April 3, 2024, includes catalog author and historian Henry Smith,…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_OinWmvQ4Y As part of Asia Week 2024, JASA is presenting a special lecture, When Zen Becomes Political: Zen and Soft/Hard Power, by Frank Feltens, curator of Japanese Art at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art. Zen has been used to foster political agendas, as inspiration for activism, and as a way to go against common norms. This talk highlights distinctive moments and individuals that made Zen and…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1ZNbvROgi4 Did you know there is another JASA? The Japan-American Society of Alabama! This is only one aspect of under-known connections between Japan and the state of Alabama. In this February 7, 2024, webinar Dr. Katherine Anne Paul, Virginia and William Spencer III Curator of Asian Art at the Birmingham Museum of Art in Alabama, discusses the many surprises and connections with Japanese Art in…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBR4-Z6ugVY In a time of uncertainty around the world, one singular exhibition has captured the essence of how art in Japan has marked times within its history that can offer the viewer new insights and powerful messages of hope and positive views. The show is Anxiety and Hope in Japanese Art, curated by Dr. Aaron Rio, Associate Curator of Japanese Art at The Metropolitan Museum…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiN0CiMXhhA Celebrating JASA’s 50th Anniversary, this lecture was presented by Dr. Rachel Saunders, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Curator of Asian Art at the Harvard Art Museums., on December 14, 2023. 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…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x071jPQH4Ag Celebrating JASA’s 50th Anniversary, this lecture was presented on November 8, 2023, and 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…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPEne53dY9c This special JASA live webinar presented on September 11, 2023, and 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…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zOYmjcPSww In this May 9, 2023, presentation, Princeton University Professor Thomas Hare speaks 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…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6zTTAMQ4sw This lecture from March 19, 2023, features 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 each present five significant art works from the PMA collection and preview a “wish list” item in their discussion. View more lecture recordings

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uRaxzbFbJw In our February 7, 2023 Webinar, scholar Ramona Handel-Bajema, author of Art Across Borders: Japanese Artists in the United States before World War II (MerwinAsia Publishers, 2021), discussed 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…