Mead Art Museum at Amherst College presents Reinventing Tokyo. Japan’s Largest City in the Artistic Imagination, the first exhibition ever held in the United States to consider portrayals of Tokyo in light of the city’s continual reinvention since its founding, under the name Edo, more than 400 years ago. On view through Sunday, December 30, 2012.
Maekawa Sempan, Night in Shinjuku (Shinjuku no yoru). Series: 15 Scenes of Last Tokyo in Original Wood-cut’ (Tokyo kaiko zue, #15), 1945 (Showa 20) reprint of 1931 (Showa 6) original. Woodblock print. Mead Art Museum, Amherst College.
Using a carefully selected group of woodblock prints, scroll paintings, photographs, kimonos, and fashion dating from the end of the Edo period in the 19th century to the present day, Reinventing Tokyo documents the changes that took place as the city modernized and westernized in the Meiji era, became the center of modern urban life in Japan before the Second World War, and rebuilt itself as part of the country’s economic miracle in the postwar decades. It concludes by addressing the ways in which Tokyo has adapted to the future visions of planners who strive to create yet another new city for the 21st century. The exhibition draws on the Mead’s celebrated holdings of Japanese art, and includes works from important private and public collections in Japan and the United States, including the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography; the Hamaya Hiroshi Archive; the Kageyama Kōyō Archive; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College; the John C. Weber Collection; and the Leonard Lauder Collection.
The Mead Art Museum houses the art collection of Amherst College, spanning 5,000 years and encompassing the creative achievements of many world cultures. An accredited member of the American Association of Museums, the Mead participates in Museums10, a regional cultural collaboration. The museum and its gift shop-café are open Tuesday through Sunday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. year-round, and until midnight on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday during the academic term.
For more information, including a complete schedule of all museum events, please visit amherst.edu/mead or call 413/542-2335.