Kyoto in Brooklyn: The Kyoto Screens (Rakuchū rakugai zu) in the Brooklyn Museum

Kyoto, Japan’s old capital for over 1,000 years, is a city where culture, commerce and politics have long given rise to powerful creative energies. At the dawn of Japan’s early modern era in the early 16th century, artists in Kyoto invented a genre of panoramic cityscapes called rakuchū rakugai zu (views of Kyoto). Matthew P. McKelway, Takeo and Itsuko Atsumi Associate Professor of Japanese Art, Columbia University, is an authority on these mesmerizing screen paintings. In this lecture, he unravels the fascinating and jewel-like details of the Kyoto screens in the Brooklyn Museum, one of the key works featured in the exhibition Points of Departure.