The American romance with Japanese art began, slightly on the heels of Europe, with the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876. That was the first time a wide variety of Japanese arts, crafts and manufactured goods were exposed to a large number of Americans; approximately 10 million people visited during the run of the fair. For example, William Walters, whose collections established the Walters Art Museum, acquired Japanese art there. The fascination with Japan lasted for decades and widely influenced the modernist movement. Even the anti-Japanese sentiment of World War II only briefly outlived the war. Ruth Grotenrath was one such fan, collecting Japanese objects, utilizing Japanese paper, exploring Buddhism, and even traveling to Japan. We will trace the history of the American affair with Japanese art, explore the impact of Buddhism on aesthetics, and how these larger events are reflected in the work of Ruth Grotenrath.
Martha Chaiklin, the former curator of Asian Art at the Milwaukee Public Museum, is now a historian, scholar, and independent curator with an international reputation for articles, books, and presentations on Asian art and its global exportation. She is the author of Ivory and the Aesthetics of Modernity in Meiji Japan (2014) and Cultural Commerce and Dutch Commercial Culture (2003), numerous academic book chapters and articles. She also translated C.T. Assendelft de Coningh’s A Pioneer in Yokohama (2012) and edited or co-edited Asian Material Culture (2009), Mediated by Gifts (2017) and Animal Trade Histories in the Indian Ocean World (2020). In 2014, Chaiklin, co-curated a traveling exhibition on the woodblock prints of Tsukioka Kogyo (1869–1927) with Annemarie Sawkins. She was the consultant behind Art Japan: 2021–1921 for the Warehouse Art Museum.
Thursday, March 2 @ 4pm