NEWS RELEASE - The Toledo Museum of Art

NEWS RELEASE
May 22, 2013
Contacts: Teri Sharp, Public Relations Manager
419-254-5082 or 419-308-4213
tsharp@toledomuseum.org
Lynnette Werning, APR, Blue Water Communications
800-975-3212
lynnette@bluewatercommunications.biz
Toledo Museum of Art revisits, updates landmark 1930 show
establishing modern Japanese woodcut prints in North America
TOLEDO, OHIO— In 1930 the Toledo Museum of Art played a critical role in popularizing modern
Japanese woodblock prints in North America by organizing the largest exhibition ever devoted to the
movement and producing an authoritative catalog to accompany it on its nationwide tour of 10
museums. Installed in four special exhibition galleries with works that spanned a decade, the landmark
1930 show presented 343 prints by 10 leading artists of the shin hanga (“new prints”) movement.
This fall the Toledo Museum of Art will open Fresh Impressions: Early Modern Japanese
Prints, which will revisit and reassemble in its entirety that historic exhibition. The Museum has also
produced a major catalog in conjunction with the show that for the first time reproduces all 343 prints
together in full color. The exhibition, organized by the Museum’s chief curator and curator of Asian art,
Carolyn Putney, runs from Oct. 4, 2013 through Jan. 1, 2014.
“The Toledo Museum of Art’s momentous 1930 exhibition is considered a touchstone of the
early-twentieth-century Japanese shin hanga movement, which revived the traditional woodblock print
for the modern era,” said Museum Director Brian Kennedy. “I am delighted that a new generation of
Museum visitors can experience this rare opportunity to view these incredibly vibrant and compelling
images for themselves.”
The shin hanga movement began in Japan around 1915 and is noted for combining traditional
Japanese woodblock technique with an interest in Western aesthetics and a vivid, modern color
sensibility. The new exhibition underlines the importance of the early 20 th -century resurgence of
Japanese woodblock printmaking, which has been described as “a period of Renaissance” in the field.
The prints encompass a variety of subject matter, including traditional landscapes, seascapes, rivers and
lakes, beautiful women (bijin-ga), actors (yakusha-e), the natural world and wildlife, cities and towns
and temples, as well as Western-inspired genre scenes and still lifes.
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Fresh Impressions 2–
The 10 artists in the exhibition are Hashiguchi Goyō (1880–1921), Itō Shinsui (1898–1972),
Kawase Hasui (1883–1957), Miki Suizan (1887–1957), Natori Shunsen (1886–1960), Oda Kazuma
(1882–1956), Ohara Shōson, also known as Ohara Kōson (1877–1945), Yamamura Toyonari, also
known as Yamamura Kōka (1885–1942), Hiroshi Yoshida (1876–1950) and Yoshikawa Kanpo (1894–
1979).
All but five of the 343 prints are now in the Museum’s collection. Most of these were purchased
around the time of the original show and donated to the Museum in 1939 by local businessman and print
collector Hubert D. Bennett. (The Museum is borrowing the additional five prints.) The Toledo Museum
of Art’s collection of shin hanga is considered to be one of the finest in any museum in the country. The
prints have only rarely been out of storage since the 1930s and as a result are in pristine condition.
In addition to the 343 woodblock prints, the exhibition will present companion objects depicted
in the prints—such as kimonos, netsuke and samurai swords and armor—not included in the original
1930 show. A companion exhibition, Ebb and Flow, in the Works on Paper Gallery, covers the period
from the 1930s to the present and explores the global influence of these modern Japanese printmakers.
Shin hanga was introduced to the American public in the 1920s through several smaller
exhibitions organized to benefit artists affected by the great Kantō earthquake of 1923. But it was not
until the Toledo Museum of Art’s 1930 show, A Special Exhibition of Modern Japanese Prints—coorganized
by Toledo curators J. Arthur MacLean (1879–1964) and Dorothy L. Blair (1890–1989), in
collaboration with shin hanga artist Yoshida—that the movement’s scope was fully grasped and
examined. The original catalog, which was fully illustrated in black-and-white and featured artist
biographies, signatures and seals, became an invaluable resource on the work of modern Japanese
printmakers for scholars and enthusiasts; it was reprinted twice.
Blair, the subject of Putney’s essay in the new catalog, was a pioneering authority on Asian art
and culture in a field dominated by men. In 1927 she spent a year studying in Japan at Kyoto Imperial
University—the first woman and first foreigner accorded that privileged status. She became assistant
curator at the Toledo Museum of Art in 1928, after stints at several other noted museums, including the
Cleveland Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago.
The 352-page book accompanying Fresh Impressions, with essays by Putney, scholars Kendall
H. Brown and Koyama Shukō and artist Paul Binnie, was published with the assistance of The Andrew
W. Mellon Foundation and the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation.
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Fresh Impressions 3–
The exhibition was made possible in part by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation.
Admission to the exhibition and to the Museum is free. The companion catalog will be available
for purchase through the Museum Store and online at toledomuseum.org in early Ocotber.
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Note: For more information contact Teri Sharp at 419-254-5082 or tsharp@toledomuseum.org, or
Lynnette Werning at 800-975-3212 or lynnette@bluewatercommunications.biz
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The Toledo Museum of Art is a nonprofit arts institution funded through individual donations, foundation grants, corporate
sponsorships, and investments. The Ohio Arts Council helps fund programs at the Toledo Museum of Art through a
sustainability grant program that encourages economic growth, educational excellence and cultural enrichment for all
Ohioans. Glass Pavilion® and Toledo Museum of Art Glass Pavilion® are registered service marks.
Admission to the Museum is free. The Museum is open Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Friday, 10 a.m.
to 10 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday, Noon to 6 p.m.; closed Mondays and major holidays. Friday evening hours
are made possible by Fifth Third Bank.
The Museum is located at 2445 Monroe Street at Scottwood Avenue, just west of the downtown business district and one
block off I-75 with exit designations posted. For general information, visitors can call 419-255-8000 or 800-644-6862, or
visit toledomuseum.org.