We are pleased to announce that this month's Third Thursday Lecture will be presented online via Zoom. You can enjoy the lecture live from the comfort of your own home, complete with slides and an audience Q&A. We look forward to seeing you there virtually, and we particularly welcome new attendees.

Thursday 18 March 2021 | 6pm GMT
You can check time zone conversion here

About the Talk

In June 2018, photographer Arthur Tress donated his collection of over 1300 Japanese illustrated books to the University of Pennsylvania Libraries. The collection includes examples from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries in all genres and formats. One of the largest at any university, in scope and quality it ranks on par with collections held in the New York Public Library, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Pulverer Collection, and others. In this talk, Arthur Tress and Julie Davis will talk about how Arthur grew the collection and discuss selected examples from the collection. Davis will also share how she is using the collection in teaching, preparing a future exhibition, and collaborating with Kislak curators and cataloguers. Davis and Tress will also say a few words about the recent gift of his photographs to the Kislak Center.

You can view the website for the collection here: https://web.sas.upenn.edu/tressjapanese/

About the Speakers

Arthur Tress is an internationally recognized photographer and longtime collector of Japanese illustrated books. As a photographer, Tress is best known for works that explore the human condition through staged as well as found scenes that represent the uncanny in the everyday as well as capture the humor, fragility, and pathos of our world. Tress began collecting Japanese illustrated books on his first trip to Japan in 1965, assembling the collection “on an artist’s shoestring budget,” and has exhibited the collection on numerous occasions. 

Julie Nelson Davis is Professor of the History of Modern East Asian Art at the University of Pennsylvania and Editor-in-Chief for caa.reviews. Davis was a SISJAC fellow and is the author of Utamaro and the Spectacle of Beauty (Reaktion Books, 2007 and 2021), Partners in Print: Artistic Collaboration and the Ukiyo-e Market (University of Hawai’i Press, 2015), and Picturing the Floating World: Ukiyo-e in Context (in press). Davis is currently working on two new projects: one on imitation, homage, and fakery in early modern Japanese art and the second on Hokusai as a book illustrator.

How to book
This event is free. Booking is essential. Use our booking form or email us.

We will send you an email prior to the event containing a Zoom link and instructions for joining us. To view the lecture or participate in the Q&A, please click on the link provided and enter your details when prompted.

Cancellations
If after booking you can no longer attend join the event, please let us know via email at the address linked above and we will remove you from the booking list.

If you have any questions or concerns about this event, please contact us.