Utagawa Hiroshige (Japanese, 1797–1858), Plum Estate, Kameido (Kameido Umeyashiki), no. 30 from 100 Famous Views of Edo, 11th month of 1857. Woodblock print, 14 3/16 × 9 1/4 in. (36 × 23.5 cm). Brooklyn Museum; Gift of Anna Ferris, 30.1478.30. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)
NEW EXHIBITION
Hiroshige’s 100 Famous Views of Edo (feat. Takashi Murakami)
April 5 – August 4, 2024
Morris A. and Meyer Schapiro Wing and Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Gallery, 5th Floor
What are the must-see locations in your favorite city? Where do you go when you need a breath of fresh air? What makes certain neighborhoods famous? Join an artist-insider on a tour of nineteenth-century Tokyo (then known as Edo), from lumberyards to destination restaurants, and see if his choices illuminate your own relationship with the cities you know well.
For the first time in twenty-four years, Utagawa Hiroshige’s 100 Famous Views of Edo—one of the Brooklyn Museum’s greatest treasures—returns to public display. The Museum’s complete set of these celebrated prints is among the world’s finest, full of vibrant colors preserved by decades in the dark.
While most presentations have centered on the prints’ technical sophistication and influence on European artists, here we focus on their urban subject matter. Originally published in 1856–58, the series captures the evolving socioeconomic and environmental landscape of the city that would become Tokyo. Through both the prints and complementary objects drawn from the Museum’s collection, you’ll be immersed in mid-nineteenth-century Edo and see it through the eyes of the ordinary people who populate Hiroshige’s settings. You’ll encounter all four seasons in scenes of picnics beneath cherry blossoms, summer rainstorms, falling maple leaves, and wintry dusks. The exhibition also includes modern photographs to show how Hiroshige’s scenes morphed into today’s Tokyo.
Artist Takashi Murakami (born Tokyo, Japan, 1962) takes Hiroshige’s views into a more fantastical realm with a set of his own paintings. Created in direct response to 100 Famous Views of Edo, these works invite us to reconsider Hiroshige’s world and his contributions to global art history.
Hiroshige’s 100 Famous Views of Edo (feat. Takashi Murakami) is organized by Joan Cummins, Lisa and Bernard Selz Senior Curator, Asian Art, Brooklyn Museum.
There are also many, exciting programs accompanying this exhibition scheduled throughout the month, including printmaking workshops and a conversation between Takashki Murakami and curator Joan Cummins.
To learn more, click here.
Kondō Takahiro (Japanese, born 1958), Reflection: TK Self Portrait, 2010., glazed porcelain, 19 1/16 × 6 3/16 in. (48.5 × 15.7 cm); Carol and Jeffrey Horvitz Collection, © Kondō Takahiro. (Photo: Richard P. Goodbody and John Morgan)
Museum Spotlight: Porcelains in the Mist: The Kondō Family of Ceramicists
December 8, 2023 – December 8, 2024
This porcelain head, a self-portrait, is glazed in shades of blue and covered with metallic droplets called “silver mist,” or gintekisai. The term, like the secret technique that produces the effect, was invented by ceramicist Kondō Takahiro (born 1958). Based in Kyoto, Japan, he carries on a legacy of innovation in ceramic art. For the last one hundred years, Kondō Takahiro and his father Kondō Hiroshi (1936–2012), grandfather Kondō Yūzō (1902–1985), and uncle Kondō Yutaka (1932–1983) have broken free of centuries-old traditions to pursue original, individual expression.
Porcelains in the Mist brings together sixty-one pieces that celebrate the Kondō family’s innovations and talents. Their early creations range from freehand-painted vases to pure-white jars. Most of the works on view are by Takahiro, who often pairs his “mist,” which he describes as “water born from fire,” with dramatic shapes and textures. Several of these powerful porcelains reflect his personal responses to monumental events, particularly the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that devastated northeastern Japan.
To learn more, click here.
Past Related Program:
Asia Week New York Zoom Panel Discussion with the Artist
Kondo Takahiro: The Thinking Hand
Tuesday, February 20, 2024 at 5pm EST
In partnership with Asia Week New York, this was a fascinating panel discussion celebrating one of Japan’s most admired ceramists, Kondo Takahiro. Kondo’s forebears specialized in wheel-thrown vessels with painted decoration, but he has pushed the limits of the ceramic medium to create art of broader significance.
Our distinguished panelists traced Kondo’s career, explained the thinking behind our current display, discussed the haunting Reduction body sculptures, and set his work in global context. Speaking live from Kyoto, Kondo introduced his recent projects and the webinar concluded with a dialogue between the artist and catalogue author Joe Earle.
Panelists included:
Glenn Adamson is a curator, writer and historian based in New York and London.
Joan Cummins has served as Lisa and Bernard Selz Curator of Asian Art at the Brooklyn Museum since 2007.
Xiaojin Wu currently serves as the Luther W. Brady Curator of Japanese Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Kondo Takahiro, artist
And moderated by Joe Earle, former chief curator of Asian art departments in museums in London and Boston, who over the last 40 years has presented numerous exhibitions of Japanese ceramics.
A recording of this discussion will be posted soon on the ‘Webinars and Video’ section of the Asia Week New York website. Please stay tuned.
Museum Spotlights are intimate installations of noteworthy collection works, recent acquisitions, and loans, presented to encourage deeper conversations about art, history, and justice.
Suneil Sanzgiri (born Dallas, Texas, 1989; active in Brooklyn, New York), Still from My Memory Is Again in the Way of Your History (After Agha Shahid Ali), 2023, 16 mm film (color, silent): 1 min., looped; Courtesy of the artist
Suneil Sanzgiri: Here the Earth Grows Gold
October 27, 2023 – May 5, 2024
How do we live through and narrate moments of revolution and revolt, and how do we understand these experiences across time and distance? Using imaging technologies to meditate on what it means to witness from afar, Suneil Sanzgiri explores the complexities of anti-colonialism, nationalism, and diasporic identity. His work is inspired by his family’s legacy of resistance in Goa, India, an area under Portuguese occupation for over 450 years until its independence in 1961. Two Refusals (Would We Recognize Ourselves Unbroken?), the artist’s newest two-channel video installation, combines archival footage, animation, interviews, and a script written by poet Sham-e-Ali Nayeem. The film tells the stories of the mutual struggle in India and Africa against Portuguese colonialism, highlighting the solidarity that developed between the two continents during the 1960s and 1970s.
Here the Earth Grows Gold, Sanzgiri’s first solo museum exhibition, pairs the film with a 16 mm projection and new sculptural work. Modeled on bamboo structures seen across South Asia, the assemblage features family photos, 3D renderings, anti-colonial publications, and images of water and red clay soil from Goa that are drawn from his research. Together these works present the concept of diaspora as a way to reconfigure our understanding of history and belonging.
To learn more, click here.
