Hood Museum of Art
Hashiguchi Goy?, Woman Combing Her Hair, 1920, woodblock print. Promised gift of Judith and Joseph Barker, Dartmouth Class of 1966. Photograph by Bruce M. White, 2012.
April 6 through July 28, 2013
In an attempt to revive traditional Japanese woodblock prints, artists of the shin hanga (new print) movement were forced to reconcile approaches to female subjects developed over the previous two centuries with the impact of modernity on both women and the arts in early-twentieth-century Japan. To ensure the contemporary relevancy of their work, the subjects they depicted ranged between deeply conservative and highly provocative conceptions of femininity, with demure, self-effacing geisha representing the former and so-called modern girls, known for their Westernized appearance and morally suspect lifestyles, representing the latter. By retaining production methods honed by their predecessors, they cultivated audiences in Japan and America who appreciated the unique legacies of the Japanese woodblock print tradition. These strategies successfully ensured a place for shin hanga depictions of women in an environment where new print media and styles imported from the West competed with Japan’s most treasured visual traditions. The results of their efforts are amply apparent in this exhibition. With ninety woodblock prints from the Judith and Joseph Barker Collection, The Women of Shin Hanga showcases two and a half centuries of Japanese print designers’ engagement with female subjects.
This exhibition was organized by the Hood Museum of Art and was generously supported by Yoko Otani Homma and Shunichi Homma M.D., Class of 1977, the William B. Jaffe and Evelyn A. Hall Fund, and the Eleanor Smith Fund
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Currier Museum of Art
Jerome Liebling: Capturing the Human Spirit
June 19 – September 19, 2010
The Currier unveils the compelling documentary images of the internationally known photographer
and film maker Jerome Liebling. Now eighty-six, Liebling has been drawn to subjects that are powerful in their vivid imagery and artistic conception and convey a poignant sense of humanity and the dignity of human endeavor. Over his remarkable sixty-year career his subjects have included the people and places of the Bronx and Brighton Beach neighborhoods of New York; the stark realities of the slaughterhouses of Saint Paul, Minnesota; and the agricultural workers of the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts. He continues to expand his artistic vision by employing digital technology to create large, dramatic black and white and color prints (up to 40 x 30 inches) from negatives taken throughout his career. Monumental in scale and masterful in technique, these prints have remarkable clarity and luminous color. They further elevate the definition and authority of photography. |