Curator’s Lecture Floating Beauty: Women in the Art of Ukiyo-e

Kit Brooks, the Japan Foundation Assistant Curator of Japanese Art at the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, will provide insights into the representation and attitudes toward women in the Edo period. Live-stream link will be provided before the event begins.

Kit Brooks is the Japan Foundation Assistant Curator of Japanese Art at the Freer-Sackler Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art. She holds a PhD in Japanese art history from Harvard University. Specializing in prints and paintings of the Edo and Meiji periods, Kit’s primary research interests revolve around the reevaluation of “eccentric” artists of the eighteenth century, as well as the relationship between illustrated books and paintings, and special prints that emulate the visual qualities of other media, such as surimono and takuhanga.

Kit has held positions at the British Museum, Harvard Art Museums, and the Children’s Museum in Boston. Kit is also a graduate of the CCL/Mellon Foundation Seminar in Curatorial Practice at the Center for Curatorial Leadership. After joining the Smithsonian in 2019, Kit is currently working on a number of shows drawing from the museum’s collection of over 8,000 Japanese prints.