Beyond the Floating World: Viewing Japanese Prints with Smith Faculty
Selected by eight Smith College faculty members, these 35 Japanese woodblock prints invite viewers to consider how works of art can speak across disciplines. Faculty participants came from art history, East Asian studies, History, and Chemistry. Their choices reflect a wide range of personal, scholarly, and teaching perspectives.
Japanese woodblock prints have long been a strength of the SCMA’s Asian art collection. Today, the museum holds more than 700 Japanese prints dating from the 18th through the 21st century. An important resource for teaching and learning, the collection gives faculty and students opportunities to study works of art together through close, firsthand observation, becoming an extension of the classroom.
This installation grew out of a faculty print study day organized by SCMA in 2025. Guided by two specialists in Japanese prints, participants explored the collection and selected works that resonated with their teaching, research, or personal experiences. Their selections offer multiple ways to engage with the prints and demonstrate how close looking can generate new questions, insights, and intersections.
Faculty collaborators:
Marnie S. Anderson, Barbara Richmond ’40 Professor in the Social Sciences and Professor of History
Yanlong Guo, Priscilla Paine Van der Poel Associate Professor of Art
Yuri Kumagai, Senior Lecturer in Japanese
Elizabeth Jamieson, Professor of Chemistry
Kimberly Kono, Chair of East Asian Languages & Cultures; Professor of Japanese Language & Literature
Atsuko Takahashi, Senior Lecturer in Japanese
Elizabeth “Betsy” Rock, Lecturer in Japanese
Sujane Wu, Professor of Chinese Language & Literature