JASA Annual Meeting and Lecture:
Highlights of Japanese Art from the Philadelphia Museum of Art

In celebration of Asia Week New York 2023, the Japanese Art Society of America is delighted to invite you to join JASA Members for the 2023 Annual Meeting and a special lecture presented by Dr. Felice Fischer, curator emerita and her successor Dr. Xiaojin Wu, Luther W. Brady Curator of Japanese Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, in conversation about highlights of the museum’s Japanese collections. 

Each lecture ticket includes one free admission to the exhibition Kyohei Inukai.

About the Speakers

Felice Fischer is the Curator Emerita of Japanese and East Asian Art, having retired in 2020 after 48 years with the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She holds a Ph.D. and M.A. from Columbia University from the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures. She has curated and participated in dozens of exhibitions and lectures and penned award-winning publications such as Japanese Design: A Survey since 1950 (36th National Exhibition Award); Ike Taiga and Tokuyama Gyokuran: Japanese Masters of the Brush (The Association of Art Historians’ Art Book Award); and Ink and Gold: Art of the Kano. In 2013, the Japanese government honored Dr. Fischer with The Order of the Rising Sun—one of Japan’s most prestigious honors in the world of culture. During the past two years, she has been working on a comprehensive overview, Art of Japan: Highlights of the Collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, to be published later this spring.

Xiaojin Wu currently serves as the Luther W. Brady Curator of Japanese Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Before joining PMA in August 2022, she was the Atsuhiko & Ina Goodwin Tateuchi Foundation Curator of Japanese and Korean Art at the Seattle Art Museum (2012–2022), where she organized several memorable exhibitions, including Tabaimo: Utsutsushi Utsushi (2017), Paradox of Place: Contemporary Korean Art (2016), Chiho Aoshima: Rebirth of the World (2015) and A Fuller View of China, Japan and Korea (2014). Over the three years before the pandemic, she devoted her energy to transforming the Seattle Asian Art Museum, which reopened in February 2020 after a major renovation. Before venturing out to the Northwest, Wu served as a curator of Asian art at the Princeton University Art Museum (2008–2012), and was a Getty Fellow at the Asia Society Museum in New York (2007–2008). In 2019, in recognition of her work in promoting Japanese art and culture, the Nakasone Peace Institute awarded her a Nakasone Yasuhiro Award. A specialist in pre-modern Japanese painting, Wu received her Ph.D. in Japanese art history from Princeton University.

Kyohei Inukai
March 17–June 25, 2023

Kyohei Inukai is the first institutional solo exhibition of Kyohei Inukai (1913–1985), a largely unknown, yet prolific Japanese-American artist. Presenting key bodies of work—many of which have never been shown before—this exhibition highlights Inukai’s paintings and screenprints of illusionary, abstract lines and shapes that defined his artistic style during the latter years of his career, from the 1960s through the 80s. These works are juxtaposed with a series of sumi-e, or Japanese ink paintings, that dovetail Inukai’s distinctive curvilinear forms and nuanced color palettes with traditional Japanese art. This rare presentation of an underrecognized artist’s legacy builds upon Japan Society’s ongoing mission to embrace and showcase diverse narratives of art and artists of Japan and the Japanese diaspora.

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Image: Otake Chikuha (1878–1936), Fall of the Castle, 1902. The Samuel S. White 3rd and Vera White Collection, 1967. Courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Kyohei Inukai is supported, in part, by a grant from the Vilcek Foundation.

Japan Society programs are made possible by leadership support from Booth Ferris Foundation and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. Exhibitions and Arts & Culture Lecture Programs are made possible, in part, by the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Endowment Fund; the Mary Griggs Burke Endowment Fund established by the Mary Livingston Griggs and Mary Griggs Burke Foundation; The Masako Mera and Koichi Mera, PhD Fund for Education and the Arts; Peggy and Dick Danziger; Thierry Porté and Yasko Tashiro; and Friends of the Gallery. Support for Arts & Culture Lecture Programs is provided, in part, by the Sandy Heck Lecture Fund. Transportation assistance is provided by Japan Airlines, the exclusive Japanese airline sponsor for Japan Society gallery exhibitions.