Postwar Japanese Art: A Panel and Discussion

November 13, 2008 The Museum of Modern Art's Celeste Bartos Theater. The program, which presented a chronological overview of developments in postwar Japanese art, was organized as part of an exchange between MoMA curators and curators of modern and contemporary art in Japan. The first phase of the exchange saw MoMA curators Cornelia H. Butler, The Robert Lehman Foundation Chief Curator of Drawings, Roxana Marcoci, Curator, Department of Photography, and Sarah Suzuki, Assistant Curator, Department of Prints and Illustrated Books, travel to Japan on a research visit. The follow-up brought four Japanese curators to MoMA for two days of discussion and collection research. The program panelists included the visiting curators Michiko Kasahara, Chief Curator, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography; Dr. Midori Matsui, independent curator and scholar; Fumihiko Sumitomo, Senior Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; and Akira Tatehata, Director, National Museum of Art, Osaka, in a discussion moderated by Cornelia H. Butler, The Robert Lehman Foundation Chief Curator of Drawings at MoMA. Participants explored the work of artists, collectives, and movements in Japan since the 1940s. Photo courtesy of Paula Court