asianart.com | exhibitions


Japan Society, New York: March 28-June 17, 2007

The United States’ first major international exhibition of its kind in more than three decades, Awakenings presents Japanese (Zen) and Chinese (Chan) Buddhist art, featuring a Japanese National Treasure and major cultural assets, and including rare loans from museum and private collections in Japan, North America, and Europe. Exploring the artistically singular yet still poorly understood tradition of figure painting in Zen Buddhist communities in medieval Japan, the exhibition features forty-seven superlative Chinese and Japanese works of painting, ranging from the 12th to 16th century.

Review by Julie Rauer

(click on the small image for full screen image with captions.)


Awakenings: Zen Figure Painting in Medieval Japan is co-curated by Gregory Levine, Associate Professor, Department of History of Art, University of California, Berkeley; and Yukio Lippit, Assistant Professor, Department of the History of Art & Architecture, Harvard University. Yoshiaki Shimizu, Professor of Japanese Art History, Princeton University serves as senior advisor to the exhibition.

Review by Julie Rauer

asianart.com | exhibitions