On April 6, 2021, John Carpenter, Mary Griggs Burke Curator of Japanese Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, introduced this special three-month-only rotation (March 8–May 31) in the Print Room (Gallery 231) in the Arts of Japan Galleries. The exhibition highlights masterworks of ukiyo-e prints from the collection of Florida-based collector Lee E. Dirks, who is interviewed in Impressions 42, Part One. The array of works, dating from the late 17th to the mid-19th century, focuses on representations of the human figure, especially actors of the Kabuki stage and courtesans of the Yoshiwara pleasure quarters in Edo (present-day Tokyo). The rotation also celebrates the magnanimous gifts and promised gifts from Mr. Dirks of several rare early ukiyo-e prints, presented in celebration of the museum’s 150th Anniversary.
Highlights of the display include a stupendous group of beauty prints by Utamaro, the renowned late 18th-century master of female “physiognomy,” as well as dynamic bust portraits of Kabuki actors by the enigmatic master Sharaku, whose unforgettable works were all created in 1794–95. A star of the exhibition is also one of the rarest, Hokusai’s Spying with a Telescope, of which only three impressions are known to survive.