Beyond the history of teaching, researching, and exhibiting Japanese art in the region, this talk will address different aspects and challenges of the field when situated in Latin America. It will focus on new initiatives centered on the Terry Welch collection and endowment for Japanese art based in Mexico City intended to bolster academic development and the general appreciation of Japanese art in Latin America. As a concrete example, the talk will discuss the groundbreaking exhibition “Casi oro, casi ámbar, casi luz. Bienvenida del paisaje mexicano al japonés” (Almost Gold, Almost Amber, Almost Light: Welcome from the Mexican to the Japanese Landscape) at the Kaluz Museum in 2023 to explore the curatorial and museographical decisions for juxtaposing Mexican and Japanese modern landscape painting traditions. Making use of transversal concepts, the talk will analyze how confronting the understanding of these parallel examples of modernity in art prompt new questions surrounding longstanding hegemonic narratives of a Eurocentric art history.

Speaker: Amaury A. Garcia Rodriguez, Professor of Art History, El Colegio de México 

Moderator: Melissa McCormick, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Japanese Art and Culture and Chair, Dept. of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University