January–December 2015
January • February • March • April • May • 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
FRIDAY, JANUARY 9, 6:30 P.M.
Japan Society Gallery
333 East 47th Street
New York, New York
Tour: Garden of Unearthly Delights
Guest co-curator Laura J. Mueller will lead a walking tour of the special exhibition Garden of Unearthly Delights: Works by Ikeda, Tenmyouya & teamLab. The exhibition includes intricate allegorical paintings, installations and digital works, created by three artistic visionaries who are helping shape contemporary Japanese art and culture.
February
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 6 P.M.
The Marymount School
1026 Fifth Avenue, between 83rd and 84th Streets
New York, New York
Tikotin: A Life Devoted to Japanese Art (2013)
Join us for a specia; screening of Tikotin: A Life Devoted to Japanese Art (2013), a 76-minute documentary directed by Santje Kramer and produced by Sarphati Media in the Netherlands, about the life of the famous (and infamous) Felix Tikotin, who died in 1986 at age 89. “It is brilliant and moving, in many respects,” says former JASA Vice President George Mann.
FRIDAY, FEBruary 20, and SATURDAY, FEBruary 21
Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, California
Clark Center for Japanese Art and Culture. Hanford, California
SPECIAL SAN FRANCISCO AND HANFORD EVENTS
Join California JASA members to visit San Francisco on a specially arranged JASA tour to see three fascinating exhibitions on view in 2015 at the Asian Art Museum: The Printer’s Eye: Ukiyo-e from the Grabhorn Collection, Seduction: Japan’s Floating World (John C. Weber collection) and Traditions on Fire: Contemporary Japanese Ceramics from the Paul and Kathy Bissinger Collection. The tour will be led by exhibition curators Laura Allen and Julia Meech, as well as collectors John C. Weber and Paul and Kathy Bissinger. A special dinner is planned for the group.
There is an optional day-tour to the Clark Center for Japanese Art and Culture in Hanford, organized by JASA Board Member Wilson Grabill, to see Elegant Pastimes: Masterpieces of Japanese Art from the Clark Collections at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the center’s final exhibition before permanently closing its doors in June 2015.
March
TUESDAY, MARCH 3, 6 P.M.
The Marymount School
1026 Fifth Avenue, between 83rd and 84th Streets
New York, New York
Hina-Matsuri in the AMNH Collection and Hina-Ningyo: History, Form and Meaning in Japanese Dolls
Laurel Kendall, Ph.D., Division Chair and Curator, Asian Ethnographic Collections, Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History, will present a talk on Hina-matsuri (Girls Day), illustrated with Taisho-era dolls recently donated to the AMNH. Alan Pate, noted expert on Ningyo, will present a visual excursion into the origins of the festival, the ningyo employed, as well as their symbolic functions within this specific festival. This will span the Heian Period through the end of the Meiji Era.
SUNDAY, MARCH 15, 12 p.m.
The Marymount School Ballroom
1026 Fifth Avenue, between 83rd and 84th Streets
New York, New York
ANNUAL MEETING AND LECTURE
JASA’s annual meeting will be preceded by a lecture by Kendall H. Brown, Professor of Asian Art History in the Art Department at California State University Long Beach. He will speak on Japanese Gardens in America, with a particular focus on New York, following the publication of his book Quiet Beauty: The Japanese Gardens of North America (Tuttle, 2013).
April
WEDNESDAY, April 1, 6 P.M.
The Marymount School
1026 Fifth Avenue, between 83rd and 84th Streets
New York, New York
LECTURE: Abby Aldrich Rockefeller’s Japanese art collection and the RISD Museum
Peter J. Johnson, senior associate with Rockefeller Family and Associates and a Rockefeller family historian, will speak on Abby Aldrich Rockefeller’s first venture into the art world—the collecting of traditional Japanese prints—in the second decade of the 20th century.
Midori Oka, Research Associate at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and guest curator of the renovation of the Asian galleries at the RISD Art Museum, will speak about the selection of the objects for the reinstallation, including those for the Philip Johnson-designed gallery dedicated to Abby Aldrich Rockefeller (1874–1948), who donated her extensive collection of bird-and-flower ukiyo-e prints to the RISD Art Museum in 1934.
TUESDAY, APRIL 7, 6 P.M.
Japan Society Gallery
333 East 47th Street
New York, New York
PRIVATE GALLERY TOUR: Japan Society exhibition of Life of Cats
Private tour of the spring 2015 exhibition Life of Cats: Selections from the Hiraki Ukiyo-e Collection, March 13–June 7. Gallery Director Miwako Tezuka will lead a tour and discussion about the subject of cats in Japanese art.
thursday, APRIL 16
Philadelphia Museum of Art
PRIVATE GALLERY TOUR: Ink and Gold: Art of the Kano
Excursion by train to Philadelphia. Participants will meet at the museum for a 10:30 a.m. tour of the special exhibition of Art of the Kano with curator Felice Fischer, The Luther W. Brady Curator of Japanese Art and Senior Curator of East Asian Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Kano lineage of painters was established in the 15th century by Kano Masanobu and continued until the early 20th century. This exhibition includes significant paintings, albums, and books, many shown for the first time outside of Japan. Tour includes private lunch at the museum with the curator.
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 29, 6 p.m.
The Marymount School
1026 Fifth Avenue, between 83rd and 84th Streets
New York, New York
SPECIAL LECTURE: Yamanaka & Co., the famed early 20th century Asian art dealer
Author Yuriko Kuchiki will join us to present an English language lecture on the early career of Sadajiro Yamanaka, based on her book (published in Japanese only) The House of Yamanaka: The Art Dealership that Sold East Asia’s Treasures to America and Europe (Tokyo, Shinchosha, 2011). Her article, “The Enemy Trader: The United States and the End of Yamanaka,” appeared in English in Impressions 34 (2013) and drew on later chapters of her book.
May
DATE AND TIME TBD
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 5th Avenue
New York, New York
SPECIAL GALLERY TOUR
Tour of the Japanese section of the special Centennial of the Asian Art Department at The Metropolitan Museum of Art with Curator of Japanese Art John Carpenter.
June
THURSDAY, JUNE 4, through SUNDAY, JUNE 7
Ohio
JASA SPRING TRIP TO CLEVELAND, TOLEDO AND OBERLIN
This trip includes visits to collections of Japanese art at the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Ainsworth Collection at Oberlin, and Toledo’s 20th-century collection. This trip has been organized by JASA member Doug Barr with the Program Committee and Michael Verne. We will be visiting the Barr and Verne Collections on this trip.
The first official event is Friday, 10 a.m., at the CMA with Sinead Vilbar, the new curator of Asian Art. But those arriving on Thursday can opt for a 5 p.m. tour of the Art Collection of the Cleveland University Circle at the Courtyard Marriott with curator Tom Huck.
July
FRIDAY, JULY 17
Boston, Mass
JASA Trip TO MASSACHUSETTS
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, curator Sarah Thompson will host a special tour of the exhibition Hokusai. The exhibition features paintings, woodblock prints, and illustrated printed books from Hokusai’s seven-decade career, including lesser-known pieces depicting whimsical instructions on how to draw, dynamic paintings on paper lanterns, and elaborate cut-out dioramas. Also displayed are some of the most famous images in Japanese art, including Under the Wave Off Kanagawa (Great Wave; about 1830–31) from the legendary series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji and the brilliantly colored multipanel screen painting Phoenix (1835). Spanning Hokusai’s work from his 20s through his 80s, the exhibition will explore common themes through sections dedicated to topics such as landscapes, nature, fantasy, and the “Floating World” of urban culture. Remarkably, most of the works are from the MFA, Boston’s renowned Japanese print collection.
We will visit the newly redesigned Harvard Art Museums with curators Melissa Moy and Quintana Heathman, who will give the group a tour of the Asian art galleries followed by an opportunity to view selected Japanese art works in the Study Storage.
OPTIONAL VISIT to Salem: SATURDAY, JULY 18
Departing Cambridge late Friday afternoon, we will journey by private bus to spend the night in Salem, approximately one hour from Boston. Saturday morning we will go to the Peabody Essex Museum for a tour of their Japanese galleries and visit to Yin Yu Tang, a late 18th-century house from Anhui Province, China, that has been re-erected at the museum. After lunch at the museum’s Garden Restaurant, participants will visit JASA members Carol and Jeffrey Horvitz‘s extensive collection of contemporary Japanese ceramics and the private bus will then take us back to Boston.
September
ThurSDAY, septEMBER 17, 6 p.m.
The Marymount School
1026 Fifth Avenue, between 83rd and 84th Streets
New York, New York
Ceramic Cartography: Japanese Map Plates and the Tempo Era (1830-44)
This talk will be presented by Richard A. Pegg, Ph.D., Director and Curator of Asian Art for the MacLean Collection in Illinois. His most recent publication is Cartographic Traditions in East Asian Maps.
In late Edo period Japan, there was a growing general interest in map-making as one aspect of the fascination with and pursuit of “Western learning” (j. rangaku). During the early 19th century, a particular map format was created in Japan, that of the map plate. This lecture will examine the various origins of the types of maps used; the different types of ceramic wares produced, including Arita, Kutani and Gennai; as well as the period of their greatest concentration, the Tenpo era (1830-44), for this unique Japanese map format.
October
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 14
Japanese Garden at Kykuit
200 Lake Road
Pocantico Hills, New York
GARDEN TOUR AND TEA CEREMONY
On this full-day excursion, JASA members will tour the 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 and Kayoko Hirota, director of Chado Urasenke Tankokai North America Head Office, will participate. This will be followed by a bento lunch (included in the tour fee).
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 22, 11 A.M.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 5th Avenue
New York, New York
Celebrating the Arts of Japan
John T. Carpenter, Ph.D., the Mary Griggs Burke Curator of Japanese Art, will give JASA members a private tour of the first rotation of the exhibition Celebrating the Arts of Japan: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection (October 20, 2015–July 31, 2016). This exhibition is a tribute to a great collector and reveals the most important and impressive collection of Japanese art outside of Japan today, carefully curated over a span of 50 years of collecting.
MONDAY, OCTOBER 26, 4:30 P.M.
Japan Society
333 East 47th Street
New York, New York
For a New World to Come
Michael Chagnon, Curator of Exhibition Interpretation at the Japan Society, will give JASA members a private tour of the exhibition For a New World to Come: Experiments in Japanese Art and Photography, 1968–1979 (on view October 9, 2015–January 10, 2016). This exhibition spotlights the radical break with the past by illustrating the new visual language embraced by artists and photographers in Japan during this period of social upheaval.
THURSDAY–SATURDAY, OCTOBER 29–31
Minneapolis Institute of Fine Arts
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Trip to Minneapolis
JASA is pleased to announce an exciting member trip to Minneapolis, Minnesota, to see two extraordinary exhibitions of Japanese art at the Minneapolis Institute of Fine Arts: highlights from the recently acquired Mary Griggs Burke collection, long considered the finest private collection of its kind outside of Japan; and Seven Masters, a shin hanga print exhibition pulling from the Wells collection of seven well-known Japanese masters.
Our program includes a guided tour of the exhibitions by Dr. Andreas Marks, Mary Griggs Burke Curator of Japanese and Korean Art at the MIA, and a special lecture on Shinsui by Dr. Chiaki Ajioka, former curator of the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.
Additionally, we will visit two Japanese gardens: the renowned Charlotte Partridge Ordway Japanese Garden in St. Paul, which Japanese garden expert Dr. Kendall Brown considers one of the finest Japanese gardens in the U.S., and a private Japanese garden that shows a modern interpretation of this art form.
November
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 16
Cobamong
Armonk, New York
GARDEN TOUR AND STUDIO VISIT
JASA members will visit a private 20-acre Japanese-inspired pond garden at Cobamong and Hiroshi Senju’s studio. This day trip has been organized by JASA member Joshua Shapiro.
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 19
Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery
Smithsonian Institution
Independence Ave. at 12th St. S.W.
Washington, DC
Sotatsu: Making Waves
One-day excursion to see Sotatsu: Making Waves, a major exhibition with important loans from Japan, Europe and the U.S. James Ulak, exhibition curator and Curator of Japanese Art, Freer and Sackler Galleries, Smithsonian Institution, will present a special lecture on the exhibition prior to our viewing. This trip is co-organized with the Asian Art Society of New England
December
MONDAY, DECEMBER 14, 6 p.m.
The Marymount School
1026 Fifth Avenue, between 83rd and 84th Streets
New York, New York
LECTURE AND HOLIDAY PARTY
Matthew R. Welch, Ph.D., Deputy Director and Chief Curator, Minneapolis Institute of Art (MIA), will give a lecture on Fast Forward: Japanese Art at MIA and Beyond. Dr. Welch will discuss the remarkable growth of the Japanese art collection at MIA, the museum’s formation of a center for Japanese studies, and the future state of the field. He holds an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Kansas and a B.A. from Trinity University in San Antonio, and is a specialist in Japanese and Korean art with particular emphasis on Edo period painting and Zen painting.