April 2, 2018–April 1, 2019
PoNJA-GenKon is pleased to announce the launch of a project to create an “Online Bibliography of Post-1945 Japanese Art” to mark its 15th anniversary, in partnership with CTCA (The Centre for Transnational Cultural Analysis) at Carleton University, Ottawa.
The online bibliography created by PoNJA-GenKon and hosted by CTCA will consist of searchable bibliographic items on post-1945 Japanese art history, primarily in English and possibly other Western languages. It will also include one or more PDF files listing select entries that will serve as a study guide, a research reference, and other such introductory and advanced citation tools. The expected completion date is 2019.
The project is funded by Alexandra Munroe through a donation of her 2017 Japan Foundation Award prize money.
Dr. Alexandra Munroe, Samsung Senior Curator of Asian Art and Senior Advisor, Global Arts at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, has long worked in modern and contemporary Asian art, presenting such important exhibitions as Yayoi Kusama: A Retrospective (1989), Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky (1994), YES Yoko Ono (2000); The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860–1989 (2009), and Gutai: Splendid Playground (with Ming Tiampo, 2013). In October 2017, Dr. Munroe was awarded The Japan Foundation Award in recognition of her distinguished contributions to the promotion of international mutual understanding. She is the first curator to receive the award.
To honor this award, Dr. Munroe has commissioned PoNJA-GenKon to produce the online bibliography of postwar Japanese art, her initial research field. “Over the last 25 years, postwar Japanese art history has become a foremost subject of international academic inquiry, critical discourse, and curatorial programming,” she remarks. “This online bibliography should expand access to the great scholarship being produced in the English language and catalyze the emerging field of world art history.”
The project will highlight the growth of the field since the mid-1980s, when such landmark exhibitions and publications as Reconstructions: Avant-Garde Art in Japan 1945–1965 (1985, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford), Japon des avant gardes 1910–1970 (1986, Pompidou Centre, Paris), and Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky (1994-95, Yokohama Museum of Art, Guggenheim SoHo, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) raised international awareness of the historical significance of postwar Japanese art. These projects also laid the foundations of a new field of art history framed by the concept of transnational modernism.
The planned online bibliography of English-language literature on postwar Japanese art history will be a useful basic resource for both specialists and non-specialists who study, research, and teach this subject from various perspectives, including area studies (Japan and Asia), modernism studies (Western and Non-Western), and world art history. In this respect, the intended users are broad, ranging from undergraduate and graduate students to scholars to museum curators, arts professionals, and enthusiasts.
PoNJA-GenKon was established in March 2003 by scholars Reiko Tomii and Miwako Tezuka as an online listserve group. The acronym stands for “Post-1945 (Nineteen forty-five) Japanese Art Discussion Group / Gendai Bijutsu Kondankai.” The goal of PoNJA-GenKon is to bring together specialists and professionals in the English-speaking world with interest in post-1945 Japanese art, and to offer a forum for interaction and debate on issues addressing postwar Japanese art and Japanese modernity. Over the past 15 years, it organized eight conferences, symposia, and panels in collaboration with leading academic institutions and museums in the U.S.
The Centre for Transnational Cultural Analysis (CTCA) was founded in 2005 by Sarah Casteel, Catherine Khordoc, and Ming Tiampo at Carleton University. CTCA is a research hub that brings together scholars and students working with transnational and transcultural approaches to studies in the humanities. CTCA promotes and fosters teaching and research that complicates the entrenched national model of cultural analysis in light of the increasingly transnational contours of cultural interaction, transmission, and formation, as well as our increasing awareness of the historical interconnectedness of cultures.
