One of the tasks of art historians is to reflect on the cultural categories used in their discipline. In Christine Guth's three lectures, delivered over the course of fall 2022, she will investigate meibutsu, a key word in the Japanese lexicon, with the aim of illuminating how it has been implicated in the formation of that country’s artistic canon. Meibutsu, literally, “famous things” or “things with a proper name,” have been examined narrowly as they relate to ways of perceiving, ordering, and interpreting specific objects in tea culture or as a form of commodity branding, but the broader cultural work that they carry out has not been addressed critically and systematically in an interdisciplinary framework.
The Tang Center Lectures in this series will focus on the construction and dynamics of meibutsu and how their legacy informs the cultural specificity of Japan’s modern canon of National Treasures.
Lecture 3: From Meibutsu to National Treasures
Japan designates works of outstanding historical or cultural significance as National Treasures, and individuals who possess traditional craft skills as holders of Intangible Cultural Property or, more popularly, Living National Treasures. This lecture examines how meibutsu inform this classification system.
This program is organized by the P. Y. and Kinmay W. Tang Center for East Asian Art, in the Department of Art and Archaeology, and cosponsored by the Princeton University Art Museum.
