For more than 2,000 years, Korea was strongly influenced by Confucianism (a Chinese code of moral conduct predicated on a series of hierarchical relationships), which accorded lower status to women. Nevertheless, throughout Korean history, women overcame many obstacles and created important art. In the early twentieth century, partially in response to outside influences, Korean women came to demand equal rights.

This installation introduces art created by, for, and/or about Korean women and features paintings, prints, photographs, sculpture, ceramics, textiles, lacquer, furniture, and personal adornments dating from the twelfth through the twenty-first centuries. It also includes recently acquired works by contemporary Korean women artists AHN Seongmin, NA Suyeon, and PARK So Eun, among others. This exhibition is co-curated by 2017-18 Korea Foundation Global Museum Intern Michelle Chaewon Kim and JSMA chief curator Anne Rose Kitagawa.

In June, during UO Zero week, twenty university students studied abroad in a Global Education Oregon (GEO) program designed by Director of Education Lisa Abia-Smith at the site of her own study abroad university thirty years ago in Aix-en-Provence, France. This intensive program, which was specifically appealing to students of color with financial and time restraints, introduced the participants to Post-impressionists Cézanne and van Gogh as well as author James Baldwin and jazz musician and activist Nina Simone, all artists who retreated to the south of France during their lives. Provence offered each of them a momentary sanctuary, which they used to express their explorations of place, identity, and representation. Through travel as well as artistic appreciation and creation, our UO students, with little to no background in art, experienced a similar oasis in which they could artistically and historically reflect on autonomy, social construction, and power relations in their personal lives. We are deeply grateful to the many UO supporters who provided travel assistance to make this program a reality.

Students studied in Aix-en-Provence for the majority of the week and spent two days in Paris; their course addressed visual media and explored vehicles for creative expression from the standpoints of marginalization, isolation, and identity. Through excursions, they were introduced to art museums as centers for social learning and engagement. Participants used personal and artistic narrative to develop critical thinking, communication and visual literacy skills and were able to consider the idea that artistic creativity is sometimes the result of adversity. Selections of their work will be featured in the exhibition.

The fall 2018 rotation of the Margo Grant Walsh collection explores the principles of design with a broad range of metalwork selections, including tableware. Co-curated by Tom Bonamici, instructor in Product Design, and new JSMA extern Caroline Phillips, the installation supports several courses in the College of Design’s Product Design area.

Common Reading at UO is a year of conversation around a shared book. For 2018, all first-year students will receive The Best We Could Do, an illustrated memoir about one family’s journey from their war-torn home in Vietnam to a new life in California. Author Thi Bui relates her personal experience of becoming a first-time mother and wanting to learn who her parents were before they were parents, and how they survived war, loss, separation, and frequent displacement.

To complement this initiative and expand on themes in the graphic novel, the JSMA presents its third annual Common Seeing, Reframing the Fragments: The Best We Could Do. Works made since 2000 by such artists from the Vietnamese diaspora as Thi Bui, Binh Danh, Dinh Q. Le, and Ann Le embody the complex sensations related to remembering and forgetting, tradition and innovation, and trying to make sense of fragments of memory and history. Their new visions emerge from the long shadows of the Vietnam War. Works in the JSMA’s collection from the 1960s by American artists, including Violet Ray, invite viewers to analyze how artists from different places and times comment critically on the war and American culture. The exhibition is supported by the Ballinger Endowment.

Visitor's Guide: Reframing the Fragments

This installation introduces the history and performance of Nō theater using selected prints by TSUKIOKA Kōgyo (1869-1927) recently donated to the museum by Elizabeth Moyer and Michael Powanda. Established in the fourteenth century, Nō (sometimes spelled Noh) is one of Japan’s oldest and most revered theatrical forms. Taking place on a small square stage with minimal props, it is widely acknowledged, both nationally and internationally, as the epitome of Japanese simplicity and refinement. Kōgyo's prints not only encapsulate the elegance of Nō performance, the beauty of its costumes, and the serenity of its masks, but also the vibrancy and dynamism of Nō drama. The installation also includes examples of other types of Japanese art, including paintings, prints, calligraphy, books, ceramics, lacquer, textiles, armor, dolls, and decorative objects. Co-curated by UO History of Art and Architecture Associate Professor Akiko Walley and JSMA chief curator Anne Rose Kitagawa.