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.”

This year’s Art of the Athlete (AofA) exhibition highlights 4 alumni of the AofA program and their contributions as they returned to share their time and talents to work on the museum’s education programs with UO students, youth in our World of Work program, and outreach programs for children identified as at risk and enduring trauma. The former student-athletes and AofA alumni who participated were Tony Washington, Jr., Malik Lovette, Dexter Myers (football), and Erin Boley (women’s basketball).

Many of the self-portraits on display were created by freshman student-athletes who recently arrived on campus to start their college journey.  As part of their orientation to campus, the new UO coach for Player Development, Tony Washington, Jr. requested that we provide a workshop on self-portraits as part of their group bonding and immersion program.  Inspired by the art of contemporary artist Titus Kaphar, whose work centers around layers of identity, Lisa Abia-Smith, JSMA director of education and Hannah Bastian worked with the students on a series of exercises focusing on internal and external identities which resulted in the self-portraits on view today. 

Other examples of self-portraits on display were created by students who illustrated their faces with words and lyrics to express their values, identities, and struggles as they process death of loved ones, sacrifices made, and hopes for the future.

In Memoriam
Spencer Webb

July 14, 2022, Spencer Webb passed away after a tragic accident. He was part of the Art of the Athlete program for a year and enthusiastically embraced making art as a way to express himself. He verbalized his appreciation for finding this new medium as a way to explore his feelings.

Last summer he started to work on his self-portrait and met with me a few times to tell me how much he “needed this in my life right now."

I was happy to connect with him again this summer and to see him enrolled in my summer 2022 Art and Human Values course. The day he passed away, he was in class telling me how proud he was of his art and how making art helped him to work through some memories from the past and how he was able to get clarity for the future.

A few of Spencer’s teammates created a work of art to honor him and used that process as a way to work through the pain of losing one of their friends who impacted so many of them.

Spencer was a bright light and he will be sorely missed by so many at the UO who were fortunate to know him.

Lisa Abia-Smith 
JSMA Director of Education & Senior Instructor 1, PPPM

I think it’s a very crucial time where we need to hear from the public and less about the public.

-Hank Willis Thomas

Four years ago, the JSMA's Education department created an annual program to engage UO students in conversations about race, identity, representation, and misrepresentation. The goal was to provide students with a space to create art and engage in dialogue about their experiences and fears as they navigate their lives as young adults. The projects begin with a conversation, then integrating art production and writing as part of the process before the program culminates in an exhibition.

This year's project, Hear My Voice, was led and curated by UO art students Kayla Lockwood (2022, ATCH BFA) Sam Berry (2023, Product Design) and Malik Lovette (2024, M.Arch). The exhibition documents multiple community conversations with UO students, primarily students of color, and documents their experiences surrounding stereotyping with digital Spectrogram prints of their voices. The project team focused on empowering and representing each participants' authentic view of their identity with the critical and reflective dispositions that accompany their personal development.

The JSMA owns a remarkable Korean painting of the Bodhisattva Ksitigarbha and the Ten Kings of Hell that was donated by museum-founder Gertrude Bass Warner (1863-1951). A bodhisattva is a compassionate Buddhist deity that postpones its own enlightenment to assist others along the same spiritual path, and Ksitigarbha—who is always depicted with the shaven head, robes, and staff of a Buddhist monk—is the merciful deity who saves those suffering in the underworld. In this painting, he is attended by the Ten Kings of Hell, fearsome judges who, based on the deceased’s activities in life­, decide upon which Karmic path they will be reincarnated. This elegant painting was created circa 1600 but suffered damage over the ensuing centuries. Thanks to a generous 2014 grant from the Korean National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage (NRICH), it was expertly conserved and remounted at the Gochang Conservation Institute in Yongin, Gyeonggido. This is the first time the painting will be displayed since that treatment.

This exhibition also features a selection of dazzling loans and gifts from the Portland-based collection of Robert and Sandra Mattielli. Colorful Buddhist, Daoist, Shamanistic, and auspicious folk paintings represent eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth-century Koreans’ devout wishes for longevity, prosperity, and good fortune, and give a sense of the variety and richness of sacred art in the second half of the Joseon dynasty (1392-1910). Organized by Anna Kim, the JSMA’s 2021-22 Korea Foundation Global Challengers Intern. With profound gratitude to the NRICH and Gochang Conservation Institute master conservator SONG Jeongju and her staff in Korea.

Explore the exhibition in a virtual tour

Devout Prayers: Korean Religious Paintings
of the Joseon Dynasty and Beyond

June 15, 2022 to April 30, 2023
Huh Wing and Jin Joo Gallery