The Japan Society and Circle of Japanese Art London are pleased to invite members and friends to a special private tour of Art Without Heroes: Mingei at the William Morris Gallery. The tour is available at 2.00pm and 6.30pm. 

With more than 80 works including ceramics, woodwork, paper, toys, textiles, photography and film, Art Without Heroes: Mingei is the widest-ranging exhibition dedicated to Mingei in the UK, incorporating unseen pieces from significant private collections from the UK and Japan, along with museum loans. For the first time the exhibition considers Mingei both as a historical moment and as a set of principles that remain relevant to contemporary craft, manufacturing and material consumerism worldwide.

For this special tour, we are delighted to welcome curator Róisín Inglesby to guide us through the exhibition. This is a great opportunity to gain insight about the movement in a wider context. Attendees are welcome to arrive early to preview the exhibition.

Róisín Inglesby is Curator at the William Morris Gallery, where she focuses on Morris’s global connections and the international Arts and Crafts movement. Educated at the University of Oxford and the Bard Graduate Center, New York, Inglesby has held curatorial roles at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Historic Royal Palaces, and the Teien Museum in Tokyo, where she assisted in creating greater accessibility for non-Japanese visitors.

Inglesby’s recent exhibitions include Pioneers: William Morris and the Bauhaus (2019); Distant Fellowship: Morris and South Asia (2021); and Young Poland 1890–1918: An Arts and Crafts Movement (2021), which won the Association for Art Historians’ Curatorial Prize

Her current (March-September 2024) exhibition Art Without Heroes: Mingei focuses on the origins, interpretations and contemporary influence of the Japanese folk craft movement and is accompanied by a Yale University Press publication.

Images: Left: Hamada Shōji demonstrating at Scripps College, California, 1953 From the collections of the Crafts Study Centre, University for the Creative Arts; Right: William Morris Gallery

If you have any questions, please call The Japan Society office on 020 3075 1996 or email events@japansociety.org.uk.

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