Cultural Roots and Contemporary Expressions

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Symposium Presentations

Master Classes

Akiyama, Yo is a highly acclaimed sculptor whose work will be featured in the contemporary Japanese art exhibition “ Confronting Tradition” at the Smith College Museum of Art this fall. Professor at Kyoto City University of Art, he received a MFA from Kyoto Art University in 1978, where he studied with the Sodeisha art movement leader Kazuo Yagi. He has received numerous awards such as the Suntory Award and the Japan Ceramic Society Award, and his work is in the collections of the National Museums in Osaka and Kyoto and the Victoria and Albert Museum, among others. The symposium will include a side trip option to Northampton to see his work.

Kakurezaki, Ryuichi is o ne of the most innovative ceramists working within the confines of an ancient historical aesthetic. He trained at Osaka University of the Fine Arts and studied with Bizen potters Iwamoto Shuichi and Isezaki Jun. After a long apprenticeship with Isezaki Jun (National Living Treasure), Kakurezaki established his own kiln in Okayama in 1986. He has connected with the spirit of traditional Bizen Ceramics and infused it with new creative energy. In numerous exhibitions Kakurezaki’s work has been recognized by prestigious awards, including the Japan Ceramic Society Prize.

Yabe, Makoto After graduating from Ritsumeikan University and completing an apprenticeship with Jinmatsu Uno and Sango Uno, Yabe moved to the United States and has been teaching in the Boston area since the mid-1970s. Through his many classes and workshops at Harvard’s Ceramics Program, the DeCordova Museum, Wheelock College, the Boston Museum School, Yabe has imbued thousands of students with a deeper understanding and appreciation of Japanese art and craftsmanship. Yabe was recently honored by the Japan Society of Boston for this inspiring cultural legacy. His work is in the collections of the Denver Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the Cleveland Art Museum and represented by the Pucker Gallery, Boston. Website

Rob Barnard is a potter, writer and lecturer in Ceramics at The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC . He was a student of University of Fine Arts in Kyoto, Japan, where he studied under the late Kazuo Yagi from 1974 to 1978. He has received two Fellowships from the National Endowments for the Arts, in 1978 and in 1990. He exhibits widely in the United States, Japan and Great Britain and has had solo exhibitions in New York, Washington DC, Boston, London, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka . His work is in the collections of the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery, the American Craft Museum, the Everson Museum and The Mint Museum. Barnard was the ceramics editor for the New Art Examiner from 1987 to 1993 and has written articles on the crafts for publications like Studio Potter, American Craft, Ceramics Monthly, Ceramics—Art & Perception, Keramick and The New Art Examiner.

Adjunct classes In conjunction with the symposium, Yabe, Makoto will be teaching two of the Ceramics Program Fall term classes and Nakazato, Hanako will be teaching one.

Nakazato, Hanako, a native of Karatsu, Japan, is a fourteenth generation potter who brings to her pottery both an historical perspective and a modern approach. Through the study of fine arts and theater at Smith College and a two-year apprenticeship with her father, Nakazato Takashi, she has brought to the making of pots a unique and singular vision which incorporates traditional values with contemporary consciousness. She is the granddaughter of National Living Treasure Nakazato Muan. For the past 5 years she has been working at the Turnpike Road Pottery in Marlboro, Vermont with Malcolm Wright.

Lectures by Artists and Scholars

Kida, Takuya, Curator at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, will discuss the revival of Momoyama ceramics by 20th century Japanese potters. He recently wrote the catalogue and curated the innovative exhibition, “Modern Revival of Momoyama Ceramics: Turning Point Toward the Modernization of Ceramics”, which examined the interpretations of late 16th-early 17th century pottery by 20th century masters such as Toyozo Arakawa, Munemaro Ishiguro, Toyo Kaneshige, and Rosanjin Kitaoji.

Louise Allison Cort, Curator for Ceramics at the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, will lecture on Sodeisha and parallel avant garde groups in the 1950’s. As a major scholar in the field of Japanese ceramics, a curator of an important collection of Asian art, and an experienced potter, Cort is engaged with each of the symposium’s key components– ideas, artifacts, and practice. Her publications on Japanese ceramics include “Shigaraki, Potters' Valley” (1979; reprinted 2000) and “Isamu Noguchi and Modern Japanese Ceramics: A Close Embrace of the Earth” (with Bert Winther-Tamaki, 2003).

Morgan Pitelka, in a talk entitled “Raku Ceramics and Japanese Modernity,” will discuss transformations in the tradition of Raku ceramics in Japan . In particular, he will focus on the response of the Raku potters and their most important patrons, the Sen tea schools, to the crises of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Morgan Pitelka is a historian specializing in Japanese culture and an amateur potter. He received his PhD in East Asian Studies from Princeton University in 2001 and is now Luce Assistant Professor of Asian Studies at Occidental College . He is the editor of “Japanese Tea Culture: Art, History, and Practice” (RoutledgeCurzon, 2003) and author of the forthcoming book “Handmade Culture: Raku Potters, Patrons and Tea Practitioners in Japan ” ( University of Hawai’i Press ).

Nakamura, Kimpei is the focus of a book to be published in the fall, "Tokyo Ware; My Work, My Theory - The Fruits of a Struggle between Japanese Culture and Western Modernization” (tentative title). In Tokyo, Nakamura developed an urban aesthetic of "Japanese decoration" that radically transformed the Ohi and Kutani ceramic traditions learned from his father, Baizan Nakamura II, in Kanazawa . He recently wrote an essay for the J.D. Rockefeller III Fund's 40th Anniversary Commemorative Booklet entitled "Without My Experience in America, I May Have Ended Up a 'National Living Treasure.'" Professor of Art at Tama Art University, Tokyo, his work is in numerous collections worldwide such as the Brooklyn Museum, the Pompidou Center in Paris, and the National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo. In 1993 he won the Japanese Education Minister's Art Prize for "Exploring the Present with Tokyo Ware Meta-Ceramics."

Christopher Benfey will lecture on the central role of New England in cultural exchange between Japan and America . Benfey is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of English at Mount Holyoke College . A frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books and the New Republic, he is the author of “Degas In New Orleans” and “The Great Wave: Gilded Age Misfits, Japanese Eccentrics and the Opening of Old Japan” He served for two years as art critic for SLATE magazine and writes about art books for The New York Times Book Review. Many years ago he studied pottery in the Tamba region of Japan.

Kikuchi, Yuko and Edmund de Waal will give a joint presentation that will highlight and compare their perspectives on the historic context and the modern influence of the Mingei movement.

Kikuchi, Yuko is a craft/design historian and Senior Research Fellow at University of the Arts London - Chelsea College of Art & Design. Her publications include “Japanese Modernisation and Mingei Theory: Cultural Nationalism”, “Oriental Orientalism”, (Routledge Curzon, 2004), and “Ruskin in Japan 1890-1940: Nature for Art, Art for Life”, (Tokyo: Cogito, 1997) jointly with Toshio Watanabe. She is currently editing a collection of essays entitled “Refracted Modernity: Visual Culture and Identity in Colonial Taiwan”.

Edmund de Waal, is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Westminster, an Academic Advisor to the British Museum, a member of the Arts Advisory Committee at the National Museum and Gallery of Wales, and a member of the editorial board of Crafts Magazine and Interpreting Ceramics. He is the author of “Timeless Beauty: Traditional Japanese Folk Art” (Thames & Hudson, 2002), “Bernard Leach” (Tate Gallery Pub., 1998) and “20th Century Ceramics” (Thames & Hudson, 2003). His recent exhibitions include a solo show at London ’s Contemporary Applied Arts (2003) and “Collect” at the Victoria and Albert Museum (2004).

After introductory presentations, Janet Koplos, Jim Melchert, and Rob Barnard will engage in a conversation about the influence of Japanese aesthetics on American potter-sculptors and the receptivity of American craftsmen and artists to this influence.

Janet Koplos is Senior Editor for Art in America, in which she has written numerous critical articles on contemporary Japanese art and ceramics. Her lecture will address the influence of Japanese aesthetics on American potter-sculptors and the receptivity of American craftsmen and artists to this influence during the whole postwar period. She is the author of “The Unexpected: Artists’ Ceramics of the 20th Century” (Museum Het Kruithuis, 1999) and “Contemporary Japanese Sculpture” (Abbeville Press, 1991). She is currently writing a book on the history of American craft.

Jim Melchert has a long and distinguished career as artist, educator, and arts administrator. He was a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, the Director of the National Endowment for the Arts, Visual Art Program, and the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including a National Endowment for the Arts Artist Fellowship. His work has been exhibited in numerous galleries and museums including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto ; Documenta 5, Kassel ; and the Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco . Years after living in Japan, Jim Melchert was inspired by the influence of D.T. Suzuki’s zen philosophy on the music of John Cage. He will discuss his encounter with Japanese aesthetics and Japan ’s influence on other important California ceramic artists.

Rob Barnard is a potter, writer and lecturer in Ceramics at The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC . He was a student of University of Fine Arts in Kyoto, Japan, where he studied under the late Kazuo Yagi from 1974 to 1978. He has received two Fellowships from the National Endowments for the Arts, in 1978 and in 1990. He exhibits widely in the United States, Japan and Great Britain and has had solo exhibitions in New York, Washington DC, Boston, London, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka . His work is in the collections of the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery, the American Craft Museum, the Everson Museum and The Mint Museum. Barnard was the ceramics editor for the New Art Examiner from 1987 to 1993 and has written articles on the crafts for publications like Studio Potter, American Craft, Ceramics Monthly, Ceramics—Art & Perception, Keramick and The New Art Examiner.

Collaborating Institutions and Individuals

Museum tours

Art Complex Museum, Duxbury, MA

Director, Charles Weyerhauser, oversees an excellent collection of 15 th – 20 th century Japanese Ceramics and a tea ceremony hut in a Japanese garden. Catherine Mayes, Senior Curator, will arrange for a tea ceremony and a presentation of the museum’s tea ceremony objects.

Harvard University, Arthur M. Sackler Museum

The fine collection of Chinese and Korean ceramics provides important background material for the development of ceramic traditions in Japan . Robert Mowry, Alan J. Dworsky Curator of Chinese Art and Melissa Moy, Assistant Curator of Chinese Art will lead collection tours for symposium participants.

Harvard University, Peabody Museum Archaeology and Ethnology

Symposium participants will visit the museum’s exhibition: “Bringing Japan to Boston: the Edward S. Morse Collection” and a special teaching exhibit set up by Diana Loren, Associate Curator, and Trish Capone, Associate Curator, in consultation with Louise Cort and Makoto Yabe .

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

The MFA’s excellent and extensive collection of Japanese art includes a comprehensive selection 17th-19th century ceramics collected by Edward Sylvester Morse. Joe Earle, Chair for the Art of Asia, Oceania, and Africa and Anne Nishimura Morse, curator of Japanese Art, have arranged for the collection tour that will be conducted by Louise Cort .

Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA

Andrew Maske, Curator of Japanese Art will conduct a gallery tour of the museum’s renowned Japanese ceramics collection. He has published many articles on Japanese ceramics and recently organized the traveling exhibition “Geisha: Beyond the Painted Smile”.

Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA

Samuel Morse, professor of Fine Arts at Amherst College and curator of “Confronting Tradition: Contemporary Art from Kyoto ”, will lead a tour of this exhibition with Akiyama Yo, whose ceramic sculpture is included in the show.

Tea Ceremonies

Harvard University. Chado Society, 5 Bryant Street, Cambridge, MA
Art Complex Museum, 189 Alden Street, Duxbury, MA

Gallery Receptions

Genovese-Sullivan Gallery, 47 Thayer Street, Boston, MA

Camillia Genovese and David Sullivan, directors, will host a reception featuring work by Hanako Nakazato, Malcolm Wright, Rob Barnard, and Mary Roehm .

Keiko, 121 Charles Street, Boston, MA

Keiko Fukai, director, will host a reception featuring ceramics by Michihisa Iida, Yoshimitsu Sakai, and Kenji Hokao, and textiles by Kishi Osamu.

Judith Dowling Asian Art, 133 Charles Street, Boston, MA

Judith Dowling, director, will host a reception featuring large sculptural pieces of Jeff Shapiro, Peter Callas, Paul Chaleff, Tim Rowan, American artists whose work has developed through the study of Japanese Ceramics.

Lacoste Gallery, 25 Main Street, Concord, MA

Lucy Lacoste, director, will host an e xhibition preview of work by Warren MacKenzie and Nancy McKenzie.

MIT Biology Building, Ames Street, Cambridge, MA

Large public art mural by Jim Melchert is featured on the ground floor.

Pucker Gallery, 171 Newbury Street, Boston, MA

Bernie Pucker, director, will host a reception featuring work from his recent exhibition: “Mingei Potters with Shoji Hamada: Noriyasu Tsuchiya, Ken Matsuzaki, Tatsuzo Shimaoka, Yaki Onda : Japanese Folk Pottery” and work by Makoto Yabe.

Support

The Blakemore Foundation, Seattle, WA has provided partial support for the presentation of this symposium.

The Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, Harvard University has provided partial support for the presentation of this symposium.

Japan Society of Boston

The symposium is presented in association with the Japan Society of Boston and in conjunction with its Centennial Celebration Year. President, Peter Grilli, and Program Director, Rico Mochizuki, have provided valuable advice and publicity for this program.

Registration forms are available here and through the Ceramics Program at (617) 495-8680.