Lunch with the Libraries & Museums - With Profit and Pleasure: Japanese Prints at Evergreen

Presented in partnership with Lifelong Learning and Hopkins at Home, Lunch with the Libraries & Museums is a series of free, online, public lectures through which staff from the Sheridan Libraries & University Museums discuss ongoing research, teaching, and curatorial work.

In 19th-century Japan, woodblock prints known as ukiyo-e, or “pictures of the floating world,” delighted the Japanese public with images of famous actors, dreamy landscapes, and idealized depictions of laboring classes. The prints’ portability and availability made them some of the earliest pieces of art to enter into the Western souvenir trade, and their impact became global. Mining Evergreen Museum & Library’s robust but rarely seen collection of Japanese prints, JHU Museums Curator of Collections Michelle Fitzgerald will highlight the artistry and reception of ukiyo-e, as well as their impact on both Western and Japanese artists into the 20th century. 

Image: Full Moon at Seba from The 69 Stations of the Kisokaido, Utagawa Hiroshige; c. 1837, polychrome woodblock print, Evergreen Museum & Library JH2016.18.36. Gift of Morton W. and Kyoko Huber.