Past Exhibitions

The Genius of Japanese Lacquer: Masterworks by Shibata Zeshin

March 21 - June 15, 2008

Shibata Zeshin (1807–1891) is history’s greatest lacquer artist, recognized worldwide for his exquisitely detailed lacquered boxes, panels, sword mounts, and other objects, as well as scrolls painted in both ink and lacquer. In addition to his mastery of traditional techniques, Zeshin developed a range of daring new lacquer textures and finishes imitating rusty iron, rough seas, patinated bronze, and even the delicate grain of Chinese rosewood. With The Genius of Japanese Lacquer: Masterworks by Shibata Zeshin, Japan Society presents the finest collection of the artist’s works ever assembled outside of Japan.

Making a Home: Japanese Contemporary Artists in New York

October 5, 2007 - January 13, 2008

To celebrate the strong and historic cultural links between Japan and New York, Japan Society presented this large-scale group exhibition featuring the work of 33 contemporary Japanese artists who call New York City home, including Yoko Ono, Ushio Shinohara, Kunie Sugiura, Yuken Teruya, and Aya Uekawa.

The show comprised a broad range of media—from painting and sculpture to video and photography—and covered diverse age groups, identities, experiences, and styles that showed the breadth and depth of contemporary Japanese art as developed, practiced, and presented in New York. Visitors went on a conceptual journey through multifaceted “homes” installed throughout the Society, illuminating the ways in which Japanese artists have made their homes and careers here since the 1950s, often bringing with them and maintaining aesthetic vocabularies that reveal their Japanese roots. Making a Home was curated by Eric C. Shiner, an independent curator specializing in contemporary Japanese art.

Awakenings: Zen Figure Painting in Medieval Japan

March 28 - June 17, 2007

The United States’ first major international exhibition of its kind in more than three decades, Awakenings presented Japanese(Zen) and Chinese (Chan) Buddhist art, featured a Japanese National Treasure and major cultural assets, and included rare loans from museum and private collections in Japan, North America, and Europe. Exploring the artistically singular yet still poorly understood tradition of figure painting in Zen Buddhist communities in medieval Japan, the exhibition featured forty-seven superlative Chinese and Japanese works of painting, ranging from the 12th to 16th century.

Awakenings: Zen Figure Painting in Medieval Japan was co-curated by Gregory Levine, Associate Professor, Department of History of Art, University of California, Berkeley; and Yukio Lippit, Assistant Professor, Department of the History of Art & Architecture, Harvard University. Yoshiaki Shimizu, Professor of Japanese Art History, Princeton University served as senior advisor to the exhibition.

Awakenings: Zen Figure Painting in Medieval Japan was organized by Japan Society, the Agency for Cultural Affairs of Japan and the Independent Administrative Institution National Museum of Japan (Tokyo National Museum, Kyoto National Museum, Nara National Museum and Kyushu National Museum).

Contemporary Clay: Japanese Ceramics for the New Century

September 29, 2006 - January 21, 2007

Contemporary Clay: Japanese Ceramics for the New Century was a vibrant survey featuring creative and iconoclastic works by the finest potters working in Japan today. Including numerous objects created by artists working in Japan’s medieval ceramic centers as well as works by those influenced by the avant-garde Sodeisha group, Contemporary Clay celebrated the rich history of Japanese ceramics and those who have made lasting contributions to the art form over the past half century. Through a kaleidoscope of colors, forms, glazes, textures, and sizes, pieces ranged from finely crafted porcelains to rough-hewn vessels that revel in the “happy accidents” of wood-fired kilns, and to ironic objects that mimic newspapers, discarded trash, and body parts.

Originally organized and presented by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Japan Society’s showing of Contemporary Clay featured approximately 100 works by 40 artists, with added pieces from New York museum and private collections. The exhibition was curated by Joe Earle, the MFA’s Matsutaro Shoriki Chair of the Department of Art of Asia, Oceania and Africa.

Contemporary Clay: Japanese Ceramics for the New Century was organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Support for the exhibition was provided by the Leadership Committee for Contemporary Clay: Japanese Ceramics for the New Century.

Fast Futures: Asian Video Art

May 22, 2006 - June 18, 2006

Japan Society Gallery, along with other museums and galleries belonging to the Asian Contemporary Art Consortium, took part in the annual week-long and city-wide Asian Contemporary Art Week. This year’s exhibition -- Fast Futures: Asian Video Art -- presented single channel video works by leading and emerging Asian artists. Japan Society presented new works produced by Bea Camacho (The Philippines), Enclose; Hiraki Sawa (Japan), Trail; and several works by Koki Tanaka (Japan).

Hiroshi Sugimoto: History of History

September 23, 2005 - February 19, 2006

"A very personal, whimsical exhibition by this well-known Japanese photographer that incorporates his own work with artifacts that he has collected over the years... as packed with goodies as the princely assemblages of art and curiosities brought together by European nobles in the 16th and 17th centuries."

--Grace Glueck, The New York Times

One of the most internationally-acclaimed Japanese artists living today, Hiroshi Sugimoto is best known for his photographic series of empty movie theaters and drive-ins, seascapes, dioramas and wax museums. This exhibition juxtaposed Sugimoto's exquisitely minimalist works, selected from the photographer's past and most recent series, with fossils, artworks and religious artifacts ranging from prehistoric to the 15th century, all drawn from his own collection. The result is an extended exploration of time, life and spirituality as perceived in the contexts of nature and history. The exhibition, Sugimoto writes, addressed "recorded history, unrecorded history, and still another history--that which is yet to be depicted… like parts waiting to be assembled in a do-it-yourself kit."

Hiroshi Sugimoto: History of History was co-organized by the Japan Society and the Freer Gallery of Art & the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.

Little Boy: The Arts of Japan’s Exploding Subculture

April 8 - July 24, 2005

A major exhibition and series of public art installations, curated by Takashi Murakami. Organized by Japan Society in collaboration with Public Art Fund.

Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture explored the culture of postwar Japan through its arts and popular visual media, from the perspective of one of Japan's most celebrated artists. Focusing on the phenomenally influential subcultures of otaku (roughly translated as "pop cult fanaticism") and its relationships to Japan's artistic vanguard, Takashi Murakami explores the historical influences that shape Japanese contemporary art and its distinct graphic idioms. The exhibition's title, Little Boy, refers to the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, clearly locating the birth of these new cultural forms in the trauma and generational aftershock. In Murakami's perspective, a resonant figure for Japan's contemporary condition is that of the "little boy"--both the nickname for the bomb dropped on Hiroshima and an image of Japan's infantalized culture.

Little Boy concluded Murakami's "Superflat" trilogy, a project conceived in 2000 to introduce a new wave of Japanese artists and to place their work in the historical context of traditional Japanese styles and concepts. The exhibition showcased the work of key otaku artists and designers, many of whom are cult celebrities in Japan, and introduced their film and video animations, video games and internet sites, music, toys, and fashion to American audiences.

Work by Anno Hideaki, Aoshima Chiho, Ban Chinatsu, Fujiko F. Fujio, Kawashima Hideaki, Kato Izumi, Komatsuzaki Shigeru, Mahomi Kunikata, Matsumoto Reiji, Miura Jun, "Mr.," Narita Toru, Okamoto Taro, Oshima Yuki, Otomo Katsuhiro, Otomo Shoji, Takano Aya, Tsubaki Noboru, Yanobe Kenji, Yoshitomo Nara, and Murakami were exhibited. Public art works by Ban, Aoshima and Murakami were installed at sites throughout New York City.

Shomei Tomatsu: Skin of the Nation

September 22, 2004 - January 2, 2005

Shomei Tomatsu (b. 1930) is internationally recognized as the most innovative and important photographer of Japan's postwar period. Bringing an objective, yet idiosyncratic eye to the fragmented reality of Japanese life in the aftermath of World War II, Tomatsu's work examines postwar Japan's ambivalent responses to Western cultural and political influences.

While representing a generation of artists who explored the complexities of modern Japanese society, Tomatsu's achievement is unique. Starkly modernist in his detached, abstract address of everyday objects, Tomatsu invests his subjects with a mystery and poetry that suggest larger, deeper metaphors. Skin of the Nation features nearly 260 works (drawn from the artist’s own collection) spanning 50 years. Each of Tomatsu's major series is represented, including Nagasaki 11:02, a historic documentation and description of the lives of A-bomb survivors in Nagasaki.

Shomei Tomatsu: Skin of the Nation is organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in association with Japan Society, New York and is curated by Sandra Phillips, Senior Curator of Photography at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and photographer and writer Leo Rubinfien.

A major catalogue accompanies the exhibition, including essays by the co-curators and John W. Dower, Professor of history at M.I.T. and author of Embracing Defeat, a cultural history of postwar Japan that received the Pulitzer and National Book awards in 2000. The book’s foreword is by acclaimed Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama. Shomei Tomatsu: Skin of the Nation is the first major English-language study of the work of this revered Japanese photographer.

An Enduring Vision: 17th to 20th Century Japanese Painting from the Gitter-Yelen Collection

March 9, 2004 - June 20, 2004

Curated by Tadashi Kobayashi, one of Japan's leading art historians, An Enduring Vision: 17th to 20th Century Japanese Painting from the Gitter-Yelen Collection offered an overview of Japanese painting from the Edo to Meiji periods (17th-early 20th century), featuring the works of renowned masters and important paintings by lesser-known artists. Specific lineages or schools of painting formed the focus of the exhibition, which present the continuity, transformation and revitalization of tradition from each generation to the next.

Organized by the New Orleans Museum of Art; curated by Tadashi Kobayashi. Exhibition catalogue An Enduring Vision by Tadashi Kobayashi with Stephen Addiss, Patricia Fister, Patricia J. Graham, Johei Sasaki, James T. Ulak, Masatomo Kawai, Motoaki Kono, John T. Carpenter, Paul Berry, and Christine M.E. Guth; edited by Lisa Rotondo-McCord.

Generous support was provided by the E. Rhodes & Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, Nomura Holding America, Inc. and the Mary Livingston Griggs and Mary Griggs Burke Foundation.
Exhibition wall covering generously donated by Cowtan & Tout (“Ambience” from Larsen). Hospitality provided by Ruth’s Chris Steak House.

Isamu Noguchi and Modern Japanese Ceramics

October 9, 2003 - January 11, 2004

Isamu Noguchi and Modern Japanese Ceramics was a landmark traveling exhibition which premiered at and was organized by the Smithsonian's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, and was the first major museum presentation of Noguchi's ceramics in the U.S.

Internationally recognized as an influential force in the history of modern sculpture and design, Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988) is best known for his stone and metal sculpture, furniture design, Akari paper lamps, public gardens and outdoor installations. However, during three short visits to Japan in 1931, 1950, and 1952, the artist produced a radical and original body of ceramic sculpture that established an important new direction for Japanese ceramics and dramatically transformed the landscape of international modernism. Noguchi’s visits to Japan proved to be especially intense and creative periods, when he exchanged new and innovative ideas with some of Japan’s most prominent postwar ceramic artists, exploring issues of personal and national identity and ways in which the ceramic traditions of the past could inform and inspire contemporary work.

This exhibition brought together 37 examples of Noguchi’s ceramic art and 36 pieces by nine of his Japanese peers, who worked in both traditional and avant-garde styles. Among the works by Noguchi—few of which have been exhibited in the United States since 1954—were two early portrait busts, as well as representational and abstract sculpture and functional vessels. An examination of Noguchi's work in clay in the context of postwar developments in Japanese ceramics established this exhibition as one of the most important surveys of postwar Japanese ceramic art.

Curated by Louise A. Cort, Curator of Ceramics, Arthur M. Sackler Gallery.

Transmitting the Forms of Divinity
Early Buddhist Art from Korea and Japan

April 9 - June 22, 2003

“'Transmitting the Forms of Divinity: Early Buddhist Art from Korea and Japan' at the Japan Society was perfection: ideally scaled, art historically innovative, with some of the most beautiful sculptures on earth, most of them just a few inches high."

--#1 pick, "The Art and Artists of the Year (2003)," Holland Cotter, The New York Times

“This show exudes a quiet power. … Its shifting aura of enlivened enlightenment may leave you breathless.”
--The New York Times

The first major international exhibition devoted to a comparative examination of Korean and Japanese Buddhist art, Transmitting the Forms of Divinity explored the formative links between the ancient cultures of Korea and Japan and the early development of Buddhist art in each nation. The exhibition examined the important early relationship between Korea and Japan, from the origins of Korean Buddhist art and its transmission to Japan in the sixth century, to the creation of independent styles and modes of expression in each nation by the ninth century. Several National Treasures and masterworks of the sixth through ninth centuries rarely (if ever) seen in the West were included among an unprecedented selection of sculptures in gilt bronze, wood, iron and stone; ceramic roof tiles from Buddhist temples; reliquaries, sutras and ritual objects, drawn from important museum and temple collections in Korea and Japan. Inspired by recent research on the close political and cultural ties between the kingdoms of the Korean peninsula and the burgeoning Japanese state, the exhibition illuminated a long-neglected dynamic in the development of Buddhist culture in northeast Asia.

Transmitting the Forms of Divinity marked the first time an American museum had received the official cooperation of both the Korean and Japanese governments in the presentation of a comparative survey focusing on the two Asian nations.

Co-organized by Japan Society and The Korea Society in association with Gyeongju National Museum in Korea and Nara National Museum in Japan, the exhibition co-curators were Washizuka Hiromitsu, Director of Nara National Museum; Park Youngbok, Director of Gyeongju National Museum; and Kang Woo-bang, Professor at Ewha Woman's University, Seoul.

A fully-illustrated volume published by Japan Society and distributed by Harry N. Abrams, Inc., featuring essays by internationally renowned scholars of Korean and Japanese Buddhist art as well as a complete catalogue of objects, accompanied the exhibition.

Transmitting the Forms of Divinity: Early Buddhist Art from Korea and Japan was co-organized by Japan Society and The Korea Society, New York; Gyeongju National Museum and Nara National Museum; and The Japan Foundation and The Korea Foundation.

Kazari: Decoration and Display in Japan, 15th-19th Centuries

October 17 - December 31, 2002

A major international exhibition introducing innovative scholarship on Japanese art to the West, Kazari: Decoration and Display in Japan examined the dynamic development of Japanese art over five centuries, focusing on particular periods of high cultural achievement. The show aimed to revise conventional notions of Japanese art by demonstrating its diversity, exuberance and conceptual complexity. Offering an unprecedented gathering of superb Japanese art from private and public collections in the United Kingdom, Japan and the United States, the exhibition featured a selection of approximately 200 remarkable objects in all major media – painting, ceramics, lacquer, textiles, metalwork and glass.

Kazari, “the will to decorate,” is the Japanese art and experience of arranging and displaying objects in specific settings, elevating the mundane into the realm of the extraordinary. It embodies the interplay between objects and settings in a dynamic process that stimulates both the visual and intellectual senses. Organized in six chronological and thematic sections, the exhibition presented superb examples of traditional art objects from the Muromachi (1392-1573), Momoyama (1573-1615) and Edo (1615-1868) periods. From the shogun’s court in the fifteenth century, through the prosperous merchants of the early Edo period, to the pleasure districts of burgeoning Tokyo, the exhibition and accompanying scholarly catalogue showed how the arts of decoration and display were integral to Japanese culture.

The exhibition was co-organized by Japan Society and The British Museum in association with the Suntory Museum of Art in Tokyo, and will travel to London February 4 - April 13, 2003. Lenders to the exhibition included the Tokyo National Museum, the Kyoto National Museum, the Suntory Museum of Art and the Idemitsu Museum of Art in Japan; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Harvard University Art Museums, the New York Public Library and the Seattle Art Museum in the U.S.; and The British Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Two noted scholars in the field, Dr. Nicole Coolidge Rousmaniere of England and Professor Tsuji Nobuo of Japan, co-curated the exhibition. A fully illustrated scholarly catalogue, edited by Dr. Rousmaniere, has been co-published by Japan Society and The British Museum Press.

The New Way of Tea

March 6 - May 19, 2002

A joint exhibition held at Japan Society and the Asia Society, The New Way of Tea explored the importance of Japanese tea tradition as a vital source of inspiration for contemporary architects and artists from East Asia and the U.S.

Part I, at Japan Society, featured a superb array of tea utensils and three teahouses, representing both the traditional and the avant-garde. Part II, at the Asia Society and Museum, included contemporary teahouses and utensils by modern architects, designers and artists. Fusuma (sliding door) paintings by Japanese artist Hiroshi Senju, commissioned by the Zen temple Daitoku-ji, a historical center for the development of tea ritual and philosophy, were featured at both venues.

Tea masters guided the public through the practice of tea on three dates at each venue, providing visitors with the experiences of performance and participation in this continually evolving art form.

Traditional Japanese Design: Five Tastes

September 26 - January 6, 2002

"A remarkable exhibition... Creates a markedly fuller picture of the separate strata of Japanese society and the way objects and ideas moved among them." —Roberta Smith, The New York Times

Celebrating the Japanese craftsman's love of natural materials and genius for bold, essential form, Traditional Japanese Design: Five Tastes offered a fresh aesthetic and cultural approach to traditional Japanese design. Over 140 utilitarian objects, including ceramics, textiles, arms and armor, and baskets, were organized into five Japanese aesthetic "tastes": Artless Simplicity (soboku), Zen Austerity (wabi); Gorgeous Splendor (karei); and Edo Chic (iki). An introductory section, Ancient Times (kodai no bi), presented fantastic archeological objects that inspired later design. The "Five Tastes" explored in the exhibition evolved from and correspond to the daily life of Japan's dominant social classes of the Edo period (1615-1868): rural farmers, the ruling military elite and city merchants. Japan Society Gallery was the sole venue for the exhibition.

The exhibition was accompanied by a 200-page catalogue by guest curator Michael Dunn, with contributions by leading specialists and introductory essays by Donald Richie and Jack Lenor Larsen. The catalogue was distributed by Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

Frank Lloyd Wright and the Art of Japan: The Architect's Other Passion

March 22 - July 15, 2001

"If Japanese prints were to be deducted from my education, I don't know what direction the whole might have taken." — Frank Lloyd Wright, An Autobiography (1932)

Japan Society Gallery presented the first major exhibition and book devoted to Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) as collector, teacher and dealer of Japanese art. Frank Lloyd Wright and the Art of Japan: The Architect's Other Passion explored Wright's self-described "obsession" with Japanese art and revealed the historic encounter between America's pioneer modernist and the aesthetics of traditional Japanese design that shaped much of his artistic and intellectual life.

The exhibition focused on Japanese works of art that Wright collected during his several sojourns in Japan and includes woodblock prints, screen paintings, and textiles of the Edo period (1600-1868). Also featured were Wright's architectural drawings for projects he was commissioned to build in Japan, as well as designs by Wright revealing his adaptation of Japanese compositional motifs. Japan Society was the sole venue for the exhibition.

The exhibition was accompanied by a 300-page lavishly illustrated book by guest curator Julia Meech, a prominent art historian and Senior Consultant to Christie's, New York. The result of nearly 20 years of research, the book is co-published by Japan Society and Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

Yes Yoko Ono

October 18, 2000 - January 14, 2001

"I believe in doing a work that grows by having people participate in it." — Ono

"Yoko Ono's art is a mirror-like her work 'a Box of Smile,' we see ourselves in our reaction to it-a tiny prod toward personal enlightenment, very Zen." —Michael Kimmelman, The New York Times

Yes Yoko Ono, the first American retrospective of the work of pioneering avant-garde artist Yoko Ono, offered a comprehensive reevaluation of her work. The exhibition explored Ono's position within the postwar international avant-garde, and her critical and influential role in originating forms of contemporary art, music, film and performance. Featuring approximately 130 works from the 1960s to the present, it presented Ono as a key transmitter of Asian thought to the international art world, through her use of chance and minimalism, and her investigation of everyday life.

Yes Yoko Ono was organized by Japan Society Gallery and curated by Alexandra Munroe, Director, Japan Society Gallery, in consultation with Fluxus scholar Jon Hendricks. Following its New York premiere, the exhibition is traveling through 2003.

A fully illustrated 350-page catalogue, co-published by Japan Society and Harry N. Abrams, included essays by leading scholars from America, Europe and Japan, along with an extensive anthology of Yoko Ono's writings and a CD of her new music.