June 21–November 20, 2025
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Dates
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Location
Arthur M. Sackler Gallery | Gallery 25
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Collection Area
Contemporary Art, Japanese Art
Leave your assumptions about prints and photographs behind. In this exhibition, flat surfaces expand outward. Images aren’t simply printed—they are worked, reworked, and then reworked again. Paper artworks accumulate layers of unusual materials like plastic, foam, glue, and tape. In our era of media endlessly copied, reproduced, and loaded to screens, these photographs and prints beg to be viewed in person.
Cut + Paste showcases seventeen Japanese artists who pushed the limits of printmaking and photography. By combining techniques, these artists created multilayered images that challenge distinctions between mediums, art-making traditions, and notions of fine art and commercial design.
The prints and photographs in this exhibition are drawn entirely from our permanent collection and range across the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. These experimental works blur reality, memory, and even how we perceive space and time. Just as each artist’s approach is unique and deeply personal, so is every person’s experience of the multiple layers, angles, and textures of these artworks.
Support
Generous support for this exhibition and the museum’s Japanese art program is provided by
Additional support for this exhibition is provided by the Mary Griggs Burke Endowment for Japanese Art.
Related Exhibitions
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Body Transformed: Contemporary South Asian Photographs and Prints
February 15–August 17, 2025
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The Print Generation
November 16, 2024–April 27, 2025
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Japan Modern: Prints in the Age of Photography
September 29, 2018–January 24, 2019
Kimura Kōsuke (b. 1936), Present Situation (Framing B) (detail), Japan, Shōwa era, 1971, screenprint and lithograph; ink on paper, National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, Purchase and partial gift of the Kenneth and Kiyo Hitch Collection from Kiyo Hitch with funds from the Mary Griggs Burke Endowment, S2019.3.982, © Kosuke Kimura
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