The Japan Society is delighted to welcome our members and friends to a special online event with Dr Rosina Buckland, Curator of the Japanese Collections at the British Museum.

We were fortunate to be able to visit Rosina in the British Museum Japanese students room recently to film her talking about a selection of objects from the collection, which have particular importance to her and which chart her journey from postgraduate student to curator of this important collection.

Join us to watch the resultant film, in which Rosina introduces a selection of her favourite objects from the Museum collection including drawings, paintings, books and sculptures, and discusses their significance not only to her personally, but in the context of Western appreciation of Japanese art, and as representative pieces of the artists and genres in question.

Some of these objects have not yet been exhibited on public display as they have recently been acquired or re-discovered from within the museum collections. This is a rare and exclusive opportunity to see objects in close up: the screening of the recording will be followed by a live question and answer session.

About the speaker

Rosina Buckland is Curator of the Japanese Collections at the British Museum. She read Japanese Studies at the University of Cambridge and after graduating worked in Japan as a translator. She received a PhD in Art History from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University and worked at the British Museum for several years before moving to the National Museum of Scotland, and later the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada. Her primary research area is pictorial art of the nineteenth century, with a focus on Chinese-inspired culture. Her publications include Shunga: Erotic Art in Japan (2010) and Painting Nature for the Nation: Taki Katei and the Challenges to Sinophile Culture in Meiji Japan (2013). During 2019 she guest-curated a special exhibition of drawings by Taki Katei at the World Museum, Liverpool. She is currently writing a book on Meiji-era art.

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