On Friday, December 8, 2023, Japan-America Society of Houston collaborated with The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) on a program featuring Canon’s Tsuzuri Inheritance Project.
“Curators’ Perspectives: Preserving the Heritage of Hokusai from Meiji and Beyond” — made possible by the National Association of Japan-America Societies with funding from the United States-Japan Foundation — introduced the technology and traditional craftsmanship used to recreate cultural assets that are now preserved in overseas collections.
Dr. Sarah Thompson, curator of Japanese art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), gave a presentation focused on the Tsuzuri Project’s reproduction of Hokusai Katsuhika’s “Country Scenes and Mount Fuji” painted screens.
Through an introduction of Hokusai and the only pair of six-fold screens produced by Hokusai’s own hand, Dr. Thompson made a case for applying facsimile technology to Japanese cultural assets that are now preserved in overseas collections. The discussion of “Country Scenes and Mount Fuji” also brought to light how the foresight and enterprise of pioneering connoisseurs of Japanese art in the 1880s and 1890s — such as Ernest Fenellosa and Charles Lang Freer — led to the U.S. becoming home to the largest collection of Japanese art outside of Japan as well as home to the world’s largest single collection of paintings by Hokusai.
Following the presentation, Dr. Thompson was joined by Dr. Bradley Bailey, the MFAH’s Ting Tsung and Wei Fong Chao Curator of Asian Art, in a discussion about Hokusai’s influence on what constituted “Japanese art” in the Meiji period and the preservation of cultural heritage.
Photos courtesy of night.sky.creative
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