ONGOING EXHIBITIONS
Takeda Hideo 武田 秀雄, The Final Illness of Taira Kiyomori (Taira Kiyomori no byōshi 平清盛病死), from the series Genpei 源平, 1985. Princeton University Art Museum. Museum purchase, Mary Trumbull Adams Art Fund. © Takeda Hideo.
Takeda Hideo’s Genpei: Defying Authority
August 30, 2026 – January 3, 2027
Members Preview Day: Saturday, Aug 29, 10am-5pm (kindly RSVP)
Insider Members Reception: Saturday, Aug 29, 5:30-7:30pm (kindly RSVP)
Special 1-Hour Tours: Sept 6, 10, 13, 17, 20, 24, 27, times vary
Allen Adler & Frances Beatty Adler Gallery
We are pleased to present Takeda Hideo’s Genpei: Defying Authority, an exhibition of 22 screenprints by the Japanese artist Takeda Hideo (b. 1948), on view from August 30, 2026, to January 3, 2027. The exhibition focuses on Takeda’s most celebrated series, Genpei, produced between 1985 and 1999, and offers a striking reinterpretation of The Tale of the Heike, the medieval epic recounting the twelfth-century Genpei War (1180–1185) between the rival Minamoto and Taira clans. The tale’s romanticized portrayal of warfare, loyalty, sacrifice, and masculine valor has exerted a profound influence on Japanese art, literature, performance, and film for centuries.
With an acerbic sense of humor and bold graphic style, Takeda has earned an international reputation for his exaggerated and often erotic aesthetics. These qualities are vividly apparent in Genpei, in which he radically reimagines the celebrated war narrative. Rather than illustrating The Tale of the Heike in a conventional manner, Takeda selects episodes that foreground cruelty, betrayal, cowardice, and arrogance, offering a more humorous and often cynical perspective on the epic. His nonliteral and non-comprehensive reinterpretation uses searing colors, bold lines, stylized patterning, and exaggerated, anachronistically tattooed figures to challenge conventional representations of the samurai and traditional ideals of heroic masculinity. The symbolic red and white associated with the rival clans further heighten the prints’ dramatic visual impact.
The exhibition brings together all twenty-two prints from the Genpei series in the United States for the first time, alongside a focused selection of additional works and contextual materials. Through humor, satire, and visual provocation, Takeda’s work disrupts the romanticized mythology surrounding the Genpei War and reflects a broader tendency in late twentieth-century Japan to question outdated stereotypes, authority, and hypocritical social values amid a period of significant social and political upheaval. The exhibition thus repositions Genpei within Takeda’s broader career as a satirical cartoonist and within the cultural, political, and artistic landscape of late twentieth-century Japan.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a series of special events and programs, offering audiences additional opportunities to experience the exhibition. Highlights include an exclusive Members Preview Day and Insider Members Reception on August 29, as well as a series of special one-hour tours throughout September. Be sure to explore the full schedule and learn more about these upcoming programs.
Takeda Hideo’s Genpei: Defying Authority is curated by Kit Brooks, curator of Asian art at the Princeton University Art Museum. An accompanying book—the first major publication on the artist in English in several decades—features a new essay by Brooks, an interview with the artist, and an essay by Elizabeth Oyler, a specialist in The Tale of the Heike and noh performance, examining the epic’s reinterpretations from its earliest incarnations to the present.
To learn more, click here.
Zhang Huan 張洹, Foam, 1998. Princeton University Art Museum. Gift of Larry Warsh / Art Issue Editions. © Zhang Huan 張洹
What Photographs Look Like
June 13, 2026 – December 5, 2026
Photographs today are often thought of as images, not objects—representations that circulate widely and effortlessly, appearing on our devices without clear origins or destinations. For much of the history of photography, however, photographs were physical objects meant to be held, treasured, traded, or displayed in albums.
The phrase “What Photographs Look Like” is borrowed from Peter Bunnell, who was hired by Princeton in 1972 as the first endowed professor of the history of photography in the United States, and who later served twice as director of the Museum. Bunnell used the phrase to upend his students’ expectations of photographs as strictly two-dimensional prints and to invite delight in the expansive nature of the medium, from photographic drawings to malleable photo-sculptures.
Photography continues to adapt and evolve today. The collections-based exhibition “What Photographs Look Like” underscores the medium’s enduring ability to surprise.
To learn more, click here.
Installation view, Huo Pavillion. Photo: Richard Barnes
Journeys Real and Imagined in East Asian Art
Ongoing
Huo Pavilion of Asian Art
South Asian Art
Ongoing
South Asian Art Gallery
Trade and the Arts of Islam
Ongoing
Art of the Islamic World Gallery
