In Conversation: Akemi May and Jeannie Kenmotsu

Akemi May, associate curator, works on paper at Carnegie Museum of Art, and Jeannie Kenmotsu, PhD, Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Curator of Asian Art at the Portland Art Museum, discuss the international reception of Japanese prints focusing on the works in our current exhibition, Imprinting in Their Time: Japanese Printmakers, 1912–2022.

About the Speakers

Jeannie Kenmotsu, PhD, is the Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Curator of Asian Art at the Portland Art Museum (Portland, Oregon). She is a specialist in the art of early modern Japan, with focus on painting, illustrated books, and prints. Other interests include contemporary Asian art, the international reception of Japanese prints, and creative practices of the diaspora. Her research has been supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Japan Foundation, and Blakemore Foundation, among others. Dr. Kenmotsu is a Senior Fellow of the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School and a board member of the Japanese Art Society of America. She is currently organizing the first major museum retrospective of the artist Yoshida Chizuko (1924–2017).

Akemi May is associate curator of works on paper at Carnegie Museum of Art and curator of Imprinting in Their Time: Japanese Printmakers, 1912–2022. Since joining the museum in 2009, May has organized numerous exhibitions and reinstallations of the museum’s collection, including Japan is the Key: Collecting Prints and Ivories, 1900–1920, Hiroshige’s Tōkaidō Road, Monet and the Modern City, and A Delight for the Senses: The Still Life. May also contributed to Art Tracks, a pioneering data visualization initiative for provenance research and oversaw the publication of the museum’s new Collection Handbook.

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