| Exhibition Dates: |
March 8–May 31, 2021 |
| Exhibition Location: |
The Met Fifth Avenue, Arts of Japan,
The Sackler Wing Galleries, Gallery 231 |
As part of the expansive exhibition Japan: A History of Style on view in the Arts of Japan, The Sackler Wing Galleries through spring 2022, a special three-month-only rotation in the Print Room (Gallery 231) will highlight 35 masterworks of ukiyo-e prints from the collection of Florida-based collector Lee E. Dirks. On view through May 31, 2021, the works are all from the first two centuries of Japanese print-making (1680s to 1850s) and focus on graphic representations of the human figure, especially actors of the Kabuki stage and courtesans of the Yoshiwara pleasure quarters in Edo (present-day Tokyo). The rotation will also celebrate the magnanimous gifts and promised gifts from Dirks of several rare early ukiyo-e prints, presented in honor of the Museum’s 150th anniversary.
Japan: A History of Style is made possible by The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Foundation Fund.
Highlights of the Print Room display will include the only known extant example, from the early 1700s, of Kiyomasu’s exuberant depiction of a Kabuki actor scattering beans to exorcise evil spirits. The presentation will also feature three precious examples of beauty prints by Utamaro, the renowned late 18th-century master of female portraits, including the highly celebrated “Wistful Love.” Included as well will be four dynamic bust portraits of Kabuki actors by the renowned but enigmatic master Sharaku, who burst on the Edo art scene in mid-1794 for less than a year. A star of the gallery is also one of the rarest works, Hokusai’s Spying with a Telescope, of which only three impressions are known to survive. It shows two women from a samurai household as voyeurs. The display will close with colorful triptychs of the mid-1800s by Kunisada and Kuniyoshi showing how artists played with representations of the human figure—filling a printmaker’s studio with female workers in beautiful kimono, for example, or representing Kabuki actors as turtles.
A selection of the Japanese prints from the Dirks Collection was shown in a traveling exhibition over 11 months in five cities in Japan in 2018–19.
About Lee E. Dirks
Lee E. Dirks, 85, retired in 2008 after a 47-year career in the newspaper industry, first as a reporter and editor with Dow Jones, then successively as the first full-time newspaper-stock analyst on Wall Street, the general manager of the Detroit Free Press, and the founder of the nation’s most active newspaper merger-and-acquisition firm. His first focus in collecting art was on paintings of New Mexico by nationally known early American Modernists, such as Georgia O’Keeffe, Edward Hopper, and George Bellows. This led to his 21 years on the board of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, including four years as president. He began collecting Japanese art seriously around 2004, having been exposed to it while serving in Japan in the U.S. Air Force from 1958 to 1961. He and his wife, Donna Bradley, live in Jupiter, Florida.
Exhibition Credits
The Print Room display is organized by John T. Carpenter, Mary Griggs Burke Curator of Japanese Art in the Department of Asian Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Japan: A History of Style will be featured on The Met's website as well as on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter using the hashtag #ArtsofJapan. The exhibition press release is available here.
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March 5, 2021
Press resources