This exhibition is the result of a Winter 2022 art history course taught by Professor Akiko Walley and Chief Curator Anne Rose Kitagawa that examined the transitional history of late 19th- and early 20th-century Japanese woodblock prints. The undergraduate and graduate students who took the course learned about prints of the Edo (1615-1868), Meiji (1868-1912), and Taishō (1912-1926) periods from the Irwin Lavenberg and Lee & Mary Jean Michels collections, including works formerly loaned for our first Fit to Print exhibition and subsequently donated by the collectors. The course focused on the expressive and technical changes brought about by the introduction of Western print and photographic mediums and Japan’s mobilization of art for education, entertainment, and propaganda during the Meiji period. Students also learned about exhibition planning and design in order to collaborate on this installation and contribute original didactic materials addressing the historical context, content, and style of prints exploring themes of modernity, gender, war, and colonialism.

This is the first JSMA exhibition celebrating the extremely generous donations of 520+ Meiji prints from the Lavenberg Collection and the first group of over 150 Japanese prints from the Michels Collection. Together, these magnanimous gifts have transformed the JSMA into a major resource for the study of Meiji graphic arts. The exhibition also includes a selection of materials related to the Ainu (indigenous people of northern Japan) organized by Mac Coyle, Post-Graduate Curatorial Fellow in Asian Art. 

Lonnie Graham is a photographer, installation artist, and cultural activist investigating methods by which the arts may be used to achieve tangible meaning in people’s lives. Based in Philadelphia, he is a Professor of Visual Art at Pennsylvania State University and has been awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pew Charitable Trust, and the Pennsylvania Council for the Arts. For more than three decades, he has created a series of photographs titled Conversation with the World. Last year Graham generously donated seventeen prints from the series to the JSMA.

A Conversation with the World comprises work done in Africa, Asia, the Pacific Rim, Europe, and the Americas. Graham meets individuals and, through mutual trust, makes a portrait and records a conversation. Regardless of age, gender or nationality, all were asked the same eight questions pertaining to origins, family, life, death, values, tradition, and thoughts on Western Culture. Their individual portraits and responses make up the content of the project that the artist hopes will “delve beneath the superficial patina of cultural differences to explore the essential and fundamental motivations of human beings in order to clearly illustrate the bond that is inherently our humanity.”