Join us on September 12 for a talk by Dr. Sinéad Vilbar, Janice Hammond and Edward Hemmelgarn Curator of Japanese Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum owns the folding screen pair Dragon and Tiger by Sesson Shūkei, perhaps his most important work. This piece was chosen to be part of Canon's Tsuzuri Project, which creates high resolution facsimiles of Japanese cultural assets. These replicas are donated to the owners of the original works so that they can be displayed to the public in various parts of Japan, allowing a greater number of people to get a closer look at these precious assets.
The presentation features painted folding screen Dragon and Tiger by Sesson Shūkei (雪村周継), a Japanese monk and painter around 1546–1556. Tigers and dragons are Chinese cosmological symbols representing the balancing forces in the world. The dragon is calling for rain, symbolizing spring which is considered the fountain of life. On the other side, the tiger calls for the wind, symbolizing autumn which is considered the end of life.
The talk will be held in the Carnegie Museum of Art Theater and will be followed by refreshments and a networking reception. Registration is free but donations are encouraged. Registration will open in August.
Dr. Sinéad Vilbar holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University and a B.A. from Yale University. She was a Japan Foundation predoctoral fellow at Tōhoku University in Sendai, Japan. Her recent exhibitions with publications include Shinto: Discovery of the Divine in Japanese Art (2019), an international loan exhibition organized with the special cooperation of the Nara National Museum, and Reeds and Geese: Japanese Art from the Collection of George Gund III (2017), which celebrated the bequest to the CMA of Japanese medieval ink paintings and ceramics from George Gund III (1937–2013) and featured the painting Reeds and Geese, bearing an inscription by Chinese émigré monk Yishan Yining (1247–1317).
This lecture is part of the "Digital Replicas of Traditional Art in Japan; Curators' Perspectives" series, sponsored by the United States-Japan Foundation through the National Association of Japan-America Societies in cooperation with the Kyoto Culture Association and Canon Inc. This series represents a novel means to open a discussion about preservation, the role of technology and issues related to the return of artworks to original locations.
Thank you to the Carnegie Museum of Art for their partnership and the National Association of Japan-America Societies and the United States-Japan Foundation for their support of this series at Japan-America Societies nationwide.
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