Yoshida Chizuko (Japanese, 1924–2017), Jama Masjid, 1960, color woodblock print on paper, The Vivian and Gordon Gilkey Graphic Arts Collection. Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon, 83.57.222. © Yoshida Chizuko
Asia Week New York is excited to welcome the Portland Art Museum (PAM) to our network of world-class institutions! Founded in 1892 in Portland, Oregon, PAM is the only major art museum between Seattle and San Francisco, showcasing artists from the Pacific Northwest and beyond. A vital cultural and educational hub, the Museum is internationally recognized for its special exhibitions and encyclopedic collection, connecting audiences with the arts and the ideas shaping our world. PAM is currently transforming its campus, adding 100,000 square feet of new and upgraded gallery and public spaces, and will unveil their expansion on November 20, 2025. Until then, explore their newly opened exhibition, Yoshida Chizuko, now on view in the main building, along with its accompanying program!
Yoshida Chizuko
September 27, 2025 – January 4, 2026
This is the first major museum retrospective to focus on the groundbreaking 20th-century painter and printmaker Yoshida Chizuko (1924–2017), a pioneering woman modernist in Japan. Yoshida Chizuko features over 100 works, many of which have never previously been exhibited, encompassing early oil paintings, rare monotypes, woodblock prints, lithographs, and zinc-plate mixed media prints, in addition to archival material and ephemera. Many works in the exhibition comprise a major planned acquisition from the Yoshida family estate, joining the Museum’s exceptional holdings of 20th-century Japanese prints that are among the most significant in the country.
Yoshida Chizuko traces the evolution of the artist’s full career, from avant-garde abstraction in the late 1940s and 1950s to illusionistic op art and neon-colored photoetchings in the 1960s and 1970s, to her late career, which was heavily influenced by the natural world. The exhibition situates her within the context of international modernist art and 20th-century Japanese printmaking, a medium that experienced enormous global popularity in the postwar era. The presentation also explores the tensions inherent in Chizuko’s role as a woman artist in mid-century Japan and as a member of the well-known Yoshida family into which she married, with a tradition of artistry spanning four generations into the present day. Works on view illustrate the personal influences that shaped Chizuko’s work, including the loss of a beloved brother, formative years as a member of the artist Okamoto Tarō’s radical Night Society collective, and the later interplay between Chizuko’s work and that of her husband, Hodaka.
Yoshida Chizuko is accompanied by a range of public programs including a daylong symposium on October 25, offering expanded context for the exhibition and for Yoshida Chizuko’s work during her lifetime. In addition, the Museum offers visitors a free audio guide on the Bloomberg Connects app featuring commentary by curator Jeannie Kenmotsu, guest scholars, and the artist’s daughter Ayomi Yoshida. The guide will reflect on Chizuko’s six-decade career with personal stories, historical context, and artistic insights. It will offer visitors a deeper connection to Yoshida’s journey as a pioneering woman modernist in Japan.
Forthcoming in 2026, the Yoshida Chizuko catalogue will feature essays by exhibition curator Jeannie Kenmotsu; Noriko Kuwahara, Retired Professor at Seitoku University, Chiba, Japan; Hollis Goodall, Retired Curator of Japanese Art at Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and Ayomi Yoshida, the artist’s daughter and practicing contemporary artist.
To learn more, click here.
Yoshida Chizuko (Japanese, 1924–2017), Outskirts of Town (detail), 1950, oil on canvas, 46 x 35 13/16 inches, Courtesy Estate of Yoshida Chizuko. Image courtesy Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon, L2025.4.
Rediscovering Yoshida Chizuko: A Symposium
The Mildred Schnitzer Memorial Program in Asian Art for 2025
October 25, 2025 from 9am-4pm
Fields Sunken Ballroom, Mark Building (1st Floor)
Tickets: $25 Non-members; $12 Members & Students with ID
In this daylong event, scholars, curators, and an artist will explore ideas introduced in the Yoshida Chizuko exhibition and offer an expanded context for her work. Speakers will discuss the inspirations that shaped Chizuko’s practice as well as her art and legacy in the historiography of modern Japanese art. Other topics include gender, postwar oil painting, twentieth-century printmaking, and the Yoshida family of artists.
Symposium registration includes free museum admission Saturday + Sunday, morning coffee with registration, and the concluding reception.
To learn more and view all details, click here.