Modern Art Collection Travels to Japan

A selection of 86 examples of modern art from the collection of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center (FLLAC) begins a five-museum tour of Japan in March 2008. The exhibition, entitled Paris-New York: Modernist Painting in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: Masterworks from the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, marks the first time that works from the FLLAC have toured outside the western hemisphere.

Organized under the auspices of Tokyo’s Art Project International and the sponsorship of the Sankei Shimbun, Japan’s national financial newspaper chain, the exhibition will visit the Shimane Art Museum (March 7–May 11) on the island of Honshu, the Ishibashi Museum of Art (May 17–July 20) on the island of Kyushu, the Yamagata Museum of Art (July 30–August 31) on Honshu, the Fuchu Art Museum (September 6–November 3) in a Toyko suburb, and the Miyazaki Prefectural Art Museum (November 14–December 14) on Kyushu. While the exhibition will feature a number of well-known paintings from the FLLAC, including a Mark Rothko and a Jackson Pollock, it will also include prints and drawings and less often exhibited paintings by artists such as Jules Olitski, Theodore Stamos, and Grace Hartigan. The theme of the exhibition and the selection of works were determined by curators from the Yamagata Museum of Art, one of Japan’s oldest and largest municipal art museums, along with curators from the FLLAC.

This exhibition coincides with the rapid growth of the Asian studies program at the college and a new exchange program with the Ochanomizu University in Toyko, as well as an increasing number of Vassar alumnae/i living in Asia.