Lecture Videos

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…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO1yxndxZ5s In this January 18, 2023, JASA lecture, Einor K. Cervone, PhD, Associate Curator of Asian Art at the Denver Art Museum, reexamines narratives of lacquer development in the East Asian region, as explored in the exhibition The Five Directions: Lacquer through East Asia, which opened December 18, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). What was it about lacquer that made it…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2zeWg4k-0g Our final program of 2022, on December 5, featured Natsu Oyobe, Ph.D., curator of Asian Art at the University of Michigan Museum of Art. Specializing in modern and contemporary Japanese art, Dr. Oyobe has curated numerous Japanese art exhibitions, including Wrapped in Silk and Gold: A Family Legacy of 20th-Century Japanese Kimono (2010), Mari Katayama (2019), and Clay as Soft Power: Shigaraki Ware in Postwar America and Japan (2022). She is also…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezZHh3JuDuA This November 8, 2022, talk by Alison J. Miller, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Art History and Director of Asian Studies at the University of the South (Sewanee, Tennesee), provides an introduction to the woodblock prints of the 1870s and 1880s with a focus on how the images worked to create and reinforce social conceptions of Meiji values and ideals. During the early Meiji period…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAoo84xkIgc In this September 29, 2022, lecture, Maggie Mustard, PhD, presented a history of postwar Japanese photography from 1945 to 1980, focusing on the major themes and practitioners at the heart of the media’s development following the end of the Second World War. Dr. Mustard introduced the central questions that photographers were asking in the immediate postwar moment—what does “realism” mean for a photograph? Should…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtPR0nRY8gY For those members who could not participate in our June 28, 2022, in-person tour of the exhibition Kimono Style: The John C. Weber Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, on August 24, we offered this Zoom webinar with Monika Bincsik, Diane and Arthur Abbey Associate Curator for Japanese Decorative Arts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Dr. Bincsik shared her curatorial…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHcn4cpkadA This May 10, 2022, talk with Alice North and Louise Allison Cort presents a new book, Listening to Clay: Conversations with Contemporary Japanese Ceramic Artists, by Alice North, Halsey North and Louise Allison Cort. The book tells the stories of 16 revered Japanese ceramic artists in their own words. These celebrated artists with unparalleled skill and creative brilliance range in age from 94 to…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BydORXLgx1U This April 28, 2022, talk by Markus Sesko, Associate Curator of Asian Arms and Armor at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, introduces the museum’s extensive Japanese arms and armor collection and discusses the newly opened exhibition Samurai Splendor: Sword Fittings from Edo Japan, on display until spring 2024. This exhibition explores the luxurious aspect of Edo-period sword fashion, a fascinating area of Japanese arms…