Japanese
The JSMA houses a large and distinguished Japanese collection including more than 1,900 traditional paintings, sculptures, ceramics, lacquers, metalwork, textiles, armor, dolls, and other decorative objects representing the 8th through the 21st centuries.
A major highlight is the ever-growing collection of over 4,700 Japanese prints dating from the Edo (1615-1868), Meiji (1868-1912), Taishô (1912-1926), Shôwa (1926-1989), Heisei (1989-2019), and Reiwa (2019-present) periods, which includes ukiyo-e (stylish ‘pictures of the floating world’), shinhanga (so-called ‘new prints’), sôsaku hanga (‘creative prints’), and others made using non-native printmaking techniques. While living in China, museum founder Gertrude Bass Warner (1863-1951) made the most of her proximity to Japan to travel, study, and collect objects intended to represent Japanese culture to a Western audience. With the renovation, expansion and reopening of the JSMA in 2005, the now beautifully updated Fay Boyer Preble and Virginia Cooke Murphy Galleries of Japanese Art feature many of the same objects selected by Mrs. Warner, augmented with more recent acquisitions from distinguished collections such as those from Yoko McClain, Jack & Susy Wadsworth, Lee & Mary Jean Michels, Irwin Lavenberg, and Peter DeFazio. Each year the JSMA’s Fay Boyer Preble and Virginia Cooke Murphy Galleries are reinstalled to coordinate with the teaching needs of UO’s Japanese art history courses.
Collection Highlights
| KISHI Renzan 岸連山 | Japanese | 1970:15
| OTAGAKI Rengetsu 太田垣蓮月 | Japanese | 2008:4.5
| HAMANISHI Katsunori 浜西勝則 | Japanese | 2020:6.2a
Latest News
Tale of Two Collectors
The JSMA is the extremely fortunate beneficiary of two spectacular gifts of 19th- and early 20th-century Japanese prints from two distinguished Oregon Collections - Portland-based collector Irwin Lavenberg, and Eugene-based collectors Lee and Mary Jean Michels.