The ASU Art Museum serves a diverse community of artists and audiences through innovative programming that is interdisciplinary, educational and relevant to life today. The Jules Heller Print Study Room at the ASU Art Museum provides a secure environment for care and storage for more than 6000 prints in the collection while also being an accessible resource for students and public. An average of 600 students visit the Jules Heller Print Study Room during the academic year. To further assist the educational experience, on display are examples of tools used to create the prints and the Curator of Prints is available to explain the tools and print making processes to students, professors and scholars. Classes and individual students have participated in the origination and research of exhibitions from our Japanese print holdings: Lasting Impressions: Japanese Prints from the ASU Art Museum (Aug. 28 – Nov. 27, 2010); Legends and Myths in Japanese Kabuki Prints (Feb. 11 – Sept. 29, 2012); and, Echoes of Japan: Prints by Western Women (Jan. 3 – May 17, 2014). By digitizing the Japanese print collection; and placing it in the Library's digital repository will expand and support our interdisciplinary and educational focus in Japanese art, making it available to a much broader audience than just the museum visitor. This is a collaboration between ASU Libraries, the ASU Art Museum, and ASU Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts.
Two panels of a vertical ōban triptych
Triptych depicting backstage preparations during a kabuki play.
Triptych depicting the court dancer Shizuka Gozen 静 御前 (center) dancing before Minamoto no Yoritomo (far left).
Portrait and biography of one of the 47 rōnin from the Chūshingura story
Depicted are the characters Kujaku Saburō Narihira 孔雀 三郎 成平 (left), Ono Komachi 小野 小町 (center), and Ōtomo Kuronushi 大伴 黒主 (right).
Depicted are the kabuki actors Nakamura Shikan IV 四代目 中村 芝翫 as the wood cutter Ōtomo Kuronushi 大伴 黒主, who is plotting a coup d'état, and Sawamura Tanosuke III 三代目 中村 芝翫 as Sumizome 墨染, the spirit of the cherry tree.
Depicted are two French visitors to Japan surveying the view from Edo's Atago Hill.
Shin hanga depiction of a comic kagura dance. The placard above the stage reads Kaguraden 神楽殿, or "kagura hall," the part of a Shintō shrine where sacred music and dances are performed.
Kuchi-e depicting a woman preparing for a western-style dinner party.
Woodblock-printed kuchi-e (frontispiece)