The following is an archive of past Japanese Art Society of America lectures and special events. For our most current schedule, click on JASA Programs.
December 2008
Monday, December 15, 6 p.m.
Japan Society
Murase Room
333 East 47th St.
New York, New York
Dogs in Japanese Prints
Dr. Raffaelle Roncalli, former president of the Ukiyo-e Society of America (now JASA) and past president of the American Veterinary Medical History Society will speak. Members are encouraged to bring friends and a print featuring “man’s best friend.” A holiday reception will follow the program.
November
Saturday, November 22, 2 p.m.
NYU Institute of Fine Arts
1 East 78th Street
New York, New York
Symposium: The Birth of Shin Hanga
Artist Paul Binnie; Professor Kendall Brown, Department of Art, California State University, Long Beach; collectors Vincent Covello and Darrel Karl will present their views on the development of shin hanga. Katherine Martin, Director of Scholten Japanese Art, will serve as moderator.
October
Thursday, October 2, 6 p.m.-7:30 p.m.
Columbia University
Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture
403 Kent Hall (EALAC Lounge)
2960 Broadway
New York, New York
A Thousand Years of Genji: Envisioning the Tale of Genji, Canonization, Popularization and Visual Culture
A special lecture by Haruo Shirane, Shincho Professor of Japanese Literature, Columbia University, to celebrate the one-thousandth anniversary of The Tale of Genji, one of the great classics of Japanese literature. Professor Shirane, an eminent Genji scholar, is the editor of the recent publication Envisioning the Tale of Genji: Media, Gender, and Cultural Production (Columbia University Press, 2008). A reception will follow the talk.
Monday, October 6, 6 p.m.
Japan Society
15 Gramercy Park South
New York, New York
Chinese and Japanese Arts: Antique or Not, Authentic or Fake?
Lecture by Patricia Graham, PhD., JASA Member and writer, lecturer, and professor
Thursday, October 9, 3 p.m.
Japan Society
333 East 47th St.
New York, New York
New Bamboo: Contemporary Japanese Masters
Joe Earle, Board Member and Curator of the exhibit, will give JASA members a special tour of the world’s first exhibition devoted exclusively to Japanese bamboo as a sculptural medium, featuring 23 innovators, old and young, who explore to the full the tension between traditional skill and new expressive opportunities. Ranging from ethereal, computer-designed filigrees, through dramatic wall pieces to angry-looking, dirt-encrusted tangles and anthropomorphic, sexually charged sculptures, the more than 90 works on display demonstrate awesome technique, meticulous attention to detail and extraordinary creativity.
Admission: $12; students and seniors $10; Japan Society members and children under 16 free. Admission is free to all on Friday nights, 6-9 p.m.
Friday, October 31, 6 p.m.
Japan Society
Murase Room
333 East 47th Street
New York, New York
Clothing, Costume, and Identity in Recent Japanese Photography
Christopher Phillips, Curator at the International Center of Photography, will talk about the work of four Japanese photographers who explore the use of highly stylized forms of dress to convey individuality in Japan today. These photographers–Tomoko Sawada, Masayuki Yoshinaga, Midori Komatsubara, and Hiroh Kikai–were all featured in the recent exhibition “Heavy Light” at the International Center of Photography.
September
Thursday, September 18, 2:30 p.m.
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Japanese Galleries
1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street
New York, New York
Animals, Birds, Insects and Marine Life in Japanese Art
Masako Watanabe, Senior Research Associate, Metropolitan Museum of Art, will lead JASA members through this exhibition. In the print galleries, we will look at paintings by Kawanabe Kyōsai and Shibata Zeshin.
June
Saturday, June 7, 2-5 p.m.
Warwick Hotel
65 West 54th St.
New York, New York
Annual Meeting
May
Wednesday, May 7, 2 p.m.
Private showing
New York, New York
Visit to a private New York Japanese art collection
Registration forms will be mailed to members (limited number of participants).
Saturday, May 17, 11 a.m.
Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway
Brooklyn, New York
Utagawa: Masters of the Japanese Print 1770–1900
A visit to the exhibition, led by , curator of the exhibition and author of the accompanying catalog. The exhibition features 70 prints from the Van Vleck Collection of the Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin-Madison.
April
Saturday, April 12, 3 p.m.
Asia Society
725 Park Avenue at 70th Street
New York, New York
Designed for Pleasure
Sebastian Izzard will guide us through the galleries for the second rotation of JASA’s commemorative exhibition.
March
Saturday, March 1, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.
Asia Society
725 Park Avenue at 70th Street
New York, New York
Symposium: Designed for Pleasure: Popular Culture in Edo Japan
Discussants: Julie Nelson Davis, University of Pennsylvania; Sarah Thompson, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Speakers: Donald Jenkins, Portland Art Museum; Samuel Leiter, Brooklyn College; Terry Milhaupt, independent scholar; Max Moerman, Barnard College; David Pollack, University of Rochester NY; Haruo Shirane, Columbia University
An all-day interdisciplinary symposium will address related issues of popular art, literature and entertainment in Japan’s capital city during the Edo period, the 17th through the 19th centuries. Symposium attendees are welcome to attend a reception following the event hosted at Sebastian Izzard Asian Art.
February
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Asia Society
725 Park Avenue at 70th Street
New York, New York
JASA and Asia Society’s Opening of Designed for Pleasure: The World of Edo Japan in Prints and Paintings, 1680–1860
Invitations will be mailed to JASA members. Members’ Opening Lecture will be given by Julie Nelson Davis, Assistant Professor, Department of the History of Art, University of Pennsylvania and one of the Designed for Pleasure catalog authors.
February 27–May 4
Asia Society
725 Park Avenue at 70th Street
New York, New York
Commemorative Exhibition of JASA’s 35th Anniversary
Sponsored by Japanese Art Society of America and Asia Society, Designed for Pleasure is a dazzling exploration of Japan’s famous “floating world” of spectacle and entertainment. Through 140 masterworks from museums and private collections in the United States, the exhibition makes new discoveries about the patronage and commerce of an art that has been characterized for a century as sensational but plebeian. From luxury paintings of the pleasure quarters to Hokusai’s iconic “Red Fuji,” Designed for Pleasure presents a focused examination of the period’s fascinating networks of art, literature and fashion, proving that the artists and the publishers and patrons who engaged them not only mirrored the tastes of their energetic times, they created a unifying cultural legacy. Curated by Sebastian Izzard, H. George Mann, Julia Meech, Jane Oliver and Allison Tolman, Japanese Art Society of America. The full-color 256-page catalog edited by Julia Meech and Jane Oliver with essays by John Carpenter, Timothy Clark, Julie Nelson Davis, Allen Hockley, Donald Jenkins, David Pollack, Sarah Thompson and David Waterhouse is available through the JASA Store.
January
Saturday, January 12, 2 p.m.
Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery
Smithsonian Institution
Independence Ave. at 12th St. S.W.
Washington, DC
Patterned Feathers, Piercing Eyes: Edo Masters From the Price Collection
Tour the exhibition presenting 150 paintings from one of the foremost collections of Japanese art of the Edo period (1603-1868). JASA is honored that Joe Price will introduce his collection and conduct this special tour with James Ulak, Deputy Director, Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery.
Sunday, January 13, 1 p.m.
Potomac, Maryland
Tour of JASA member Darrel C. Karl’s collection
Includes early 20th-century Japanese prints, paintings and drawings by Kawase Hasui, Hiroshi Yoshida, Ishikawa Toraji, Charles W. Bartlett, Bertha Lum, Natori Shunsen, Ohara Koson and Kitano Tsunetomi, among many others. Also on view will be selections from the Karl collection’s renowned holdings of paintings, watercolors and drawings by Hashiguchi Goyo.