Kimono: Garment, Canvas, and Artistic Muse

The Japanese kimono is one of the world’s most admired garments—an instantly recognizable robe with a tall “T” form. The word kimono, meaning “a thing that is worn,” refers to many different types of robes, from ornate silk wedding uchikake to simpler cotton summer yukata.

Worn in Japan by both women and men for well over a thousand years, the kimono has often been a canvas for spectacular woven, dyed, painted, printed, and embroidered designs created by Japan’s finest textile artists. After the mid-nineteenth century, when Japan opened to foreign diplomacy and trade with the United States and Europe, the kimono also became beloved in the West: a subject for painters and an inspiration for fashion designers.

In recent decades, the influence of the kimono has reached beyond fashion, and a number of contemporary artists from around the world are creating kimono-inspired works in such diverse media as paper, fiber, metal, glass, and ceramics.

This exhibition explores the kimono as a traditional Japanese garment; a canvas for spectacular design, symbolism, and messaging; and as a muse for the works of ten important contemporary artists: Miya Ando, Kristine Aono, CAMY, Gordon Chandler, Reiko Fujii, Karen LaMonte, Peter Liashkov, Maria Papatzelou, Michael F. Rohde, and Na Omi Shintani.

The extraordinary works of painting, sculpture, and fiber art of these international artists have all been inspired in fascinating ways by this iconic garment.