The exhibition presents selected works of Japanese and Chinese art from the Museum's collection, as well as recent gifts and new acquisitions in honor of Yoshiaki Shimizu, Princeton University Graduate School Class of 1975, the Frederick Marquand Professor of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University, who will retire this spring after twenty-five years of teaching. An important acquisition of Japanese art by the museum in 2007, Illustrated Gleanings from the Legends of Past Virtues (Shuikotokuden-e), ca 1310-20, will be re-credited as a museum purchase in honor of Professor Shimizu. A pivotal scene of an illustrated biography of the founder of Japan's Pure Land School of Buddhism, Honen-bo Genku (1133-1212), the painting in a way parallels Shimizu's role as a leading scholar in the field of Japanese art history and as a mentor for generations of students.
Memorable Encounters will celebrate Professor Shimizu's teaching and contributions to the field of East Asian art history, and his wide-ranging scholarly interests, which cross the boundaries of the arts of Japan, China and the West, between traditional and contemporary art, and artist and art historian. Shimizu himself is a fine painter. One of his works, which will be included in the exhibition, helps to tell his story as an artist, art historian, and, above all, a passionate student and teacher of the arts. Befitting the theme of memorable encounters, the works on view, ranging from Buddhist sculpture, and ink painting, to modern ceramics, reveal an artistic dialogue with different cultures, mediums, and ways of seeing.