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Still Making Waves: Charles Lang Freer and Sotatsu's Waves at Matsushima

Presented by Frank Feltens, Curator of Japanese Art, Freer Gallery of Art, National Museum of Asian Art (FGA, NMAA), Smithsonian

Co-hosted by Freer House/Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute/Wayne State University, Japan America Society of Michigan and Southwestern Ontario, and Friends of Asian Arts & Cultures, Detroit Institute of Arts

One of America’s leading experts on Japanese art, Frank Feltens, Curator of Japanese Art, Freer Gallery of Art, National Museum of Asian Art (FGA, NMAA), Smithsonian, will focus his lecture on one of the great masterpieces in the museum’s collection, the pair of 17th c. folding screens, Waves at Matsushima, by Tawaraya Sotatsu. His talk will highlight the screens’ unique association with Detroit and the museum’s founder, Charles Lang Freer, and their recent high-resolution reproduction.

Canon, Inc., the Kyoto Culture Association, and the FGA, NMAA have created stunning replicas of some of the museum’s most important works of Japanese art, including Waves at Matsushima, using a combination of advanced technology and traditional crafts. The Tsuzuri Project facsimiles can travel and be seen by wider audiences, expanding Freer’s and the museum’s goal of cross-cultural understanding between Asia and America through the arts.

Freer acquired Waves at Matsushima in Japan in 1906 and displayed it in his Detroit home. Upon his death in 1919, the screens were donated to the Smithsonian with the rest of his extraordinary collection of Asian and American art, to be installed in the newly built Freer Gallery of Art he established in Washington, D.C.. The museum, with deep roots in Detroit, is celebrating its centennial year as America’s first National art museum, first Asian art museum, and first art museum of the Smithsonian.

Co-sponsored by Freer House/Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute/Wayne State University, Japan America Society of Michigan and Southwestern Ontario, Friends of Asian Arts & Cultures, Detroit Institute of Arts, National Association of Japan-America Societies, Fred A. and Barbara M. Erb Family Foundation, Japan Cultural Development, and Japan Business Society of Detroit