‘AWAKENINGS: ZEN FIGURE PAINTING’ AT JAPAN SOCIETY IN NYC MARCH 28

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NEW YORK CITY —Japan Society, celebrating its 100th anniversary this year, will present a gallery exhibition, “Awakenings: Zen Figure Painting in Medieval Japan,” on view March 28–June 17.

 “Awakenings” presents Japanese (Zen) and Chinese (Chan) Buddhist art, featuring a Japanese national treasure and major cultural assets, and includes rare loans from museum and private collections in Japan, North America and Europe.

Exploring the artistically singular yet still poorly understood tradition of figure painting in Zen Buddhist communities in medieval Japan, the exhibition features 47 Chinese and Japanese works ranging from the Twelfth to Sixteenth Centuries.

Co-organized with the Agency for Cultural Affairs of the Government of Japan (Bunka-cho), and in association with the Tokyo National Museum and the Kyoto National Museum, the exhibition is co-curated by Gregory Levine, associate professor, department of history of art, University of California, Berkeley; and Yukio Lippit, assistant professor, department of the history of art & Architecture, Harvard University. Yoshiaki Shimizu, professor of Japanese art history, Princeton University, is the exhibition’s senior advisor.

The opening coincides with New York’s annual Asia Week.  Japan Society is at 333 East 47th Street. For more information, 212-832-1155 or www.japansociety.org.