Lunchtime Lecture: Japan’s Floating World and the Evolution of the Stand-In
- Lecture
Suzanne and Paul Westlake Performing Arts Center
Manjusuri and Sea Turtle, 1989. Oda Mayumi (小田 まゆみ) (Japanese, b. 1941). Showa period (1989–2019). Diptych of color screenprints; each: 97.5 x 65.5 cm. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of the artist, 1994.77.a–b. © Oda Mayumi
About The Event
Come to the CMA for a quick bite of art history. Every first Tuesday of each month, join curators, conservators, scholars, and other museum staff for thirty-minute talks on objects currently on display in the museum galleries.
The Japanese term mitate-e means images in which one thing is substituted—or stands in—for another. Artists deployed this visual device to engaging effect in 18th- and 19th-century paintings and prints known as ukiyo-e, or “pictures of the floating world,” a euphemism for licensed “pleasure” districts. Some of these depictions, as well as a contemporary feminist take on them, appear in the current installation of the Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation Galleries of Japanese Art (235A–B).
All education programs at the Cleveland Museum of Art are underwritten by the CMA Fund for Education. Principal support is provided by Dieter and Susan M. Kaesgen and Gail C. and Elliott L. Schlang. Major annual support is provided by Brenda and Marshall Brown, Eva and Rudolf Linnebach, Medical Mutual of Ohio, the Edwin D. Northrup II Fund, Shurtape Technologies, and the Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation. Generous annual support is provided by an anonymous donor, Gini and Randy Barbato, the M. E. and F. J. Callahan Foundation, Dr. William A. Chilcote Jr. and Dr. Barbara S. Kaplan, Char and Chuck Fowler, the Giant Eagle Foundation, Linda Harper, the late Marta and the late Donald M. Jack Jr., Susan LaPine, Bill and Joyce Litzler, the Logsdon Family Fund for Education, Sarah Nash, Courtney and Michael Novak, William J. and Katherine T. O’Neill, the Pickering Foundation, William Roj and Mary Lynn Durham, Suzanne Cushwa Rusnak and Jeff Rusnak, Ellen and Lowell Satre, in memory of Dee Schafer, Betty T. and David M. Schneider, the Sally and Larry Sears Fund for Education Endowment, Roy Smith, Paula and Eugene Stevens, the Trilling Family Foundation, Jack and Jeanette Walton, and the Womens Council of the Cleveland Museum of Art.