Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art National Museum of Asian Art
Toggle Menu Search

Site Search

The Collections and Archives

All Exhibitions

Reasons to Gather: Japanese Tea Practice Unwrapped

A black jar sits on a red tray. Two more jars wear fabric covers. A floral fabric and wood boxes spread across the background.

  • Dates

    April 12, 2025–April 26, 2026

  • Location

    Freer Gallery of Art | Gallery 8

  • Collection Area

    Chinese Art, Japanese Art, Korean Art, South Asian & Himalayan Art

Japanese tea practice, chanoyu, centers on the appreciation of tea utensils used to prepare and consume powdered green tea, called matcha. Chanoyu elevates these utensils, which include ceramic tea caddies, tea bowls, and hanging scrolls of calligraphy, into objects of aesthetic admiration. The objects in this exhibition accumulated significance over generations through their continued use and display at tea gatherings. Tea practitioners have also cherished the accompanying boxes, documents, and textiles that demonstrate an object’s accrued layers of historical and cultural meaning.

Reasons to Gather: Japanese Tea Practice Unwrapped presents eleven historic tea utensils and accessories, including ceramics, hanging scrolls, boxes, and wrapping cloths. Finding their way from China, Korea, and South Asia into Japanese tea rooms, these objects tell a story of trade and exchange across Asia. This exhibition unveils how chanoyu brought together these different cultural elements through networks of tea practitioners.

The tea utensils featured in this exhibition come from the Kinsey Chanoyu Collection. Gregory Kinsey gifted the museum nearly two hundred objects, a collection that grew from his lifelong devotion to the practice of chanoyu. In an effort to share and uplift the art of tea practice, Kinsey dedicated most of the works to the Freer Study Collection for use in public programs that demonstrate the traditional preparation of matcha. Because of their historical and artistic significance, another sixteen pieces with accompanying provenance documentation entered the Freer Gallery of Art Collection for exhibition and research.

Featured Event

Tea Presentation

April 19, 2025

Witness a public presentation of a traditional Japanese practice of tea preparation called chanoyu, featuring tea utensils from the museum’s collection. Chanoyu is an embodied practice where students learn codified ways of preparing and consuming powdered green tea, or matcha, through in-person instruction from a teacher. This event celebrates the fifteenth anniversary of the Eastern Region USA chapter of the Omotesenke Domonkai, the association of practitioners following the tradition of Omotesenke Fushin-an in Kyoto, Japan.

A glazed ceramic footed bowl.

Related Publication

Chigusa and the Art of Tea

Author List: Louise Allison Cort and Andrew M. Watsky, et al.
Publisher: Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and Freer Gallery of Art
Publication Date: 2014

It was admired for centuries, considered a vessel worthy of display, adornment, and contemplation. Now Chigusa and the Art of Tea traces the journey of this tea-leaf storage jar through seven centuries, from its humble beginnings in Song or Yuan dynasty China to its veneration as a named object in sixteenth-century Japan. That name—Chigusa—distinguished the object and allowed it to be discussed as a discrete entity, much like a person. Named tea jars added a new dimension to chanoyu, the intricate tea practice that focused on the taste of the tea, the utensils used to prepare it, and the ideal environment for aesthetic contemplation. Chigusa and the Art of Tea reveals Chigusa’s significance through the words of tea men, whose meticulously recorded diaries describe their early encounters with the jar. The book also examines the textiles, documents, and accessories that accompanied the jar through its centuries of connoisseurship in Japan—including those prepared in the sixteenth century by its first recorded owner—until its acquisition by the Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery of Art in 2009.

Cover of Chigusa and the Art of Tea, showing a pot with a decorative cover

Support

 

This exhibition is made possible by the Shirley Z. Johnson Endowment Fund.

Generous support for this exhibition and the museum’s Japanese art program is provided by

  • Mitsubishi Corporation

Related Exhibitions

Tea caddy, named Sakai Kokatatsuki, with red lacquer tray and scroll, China, Yuan dynasty, 1279–1368, brown stoneware with black iron glaze and ivory lid; lacquer; paper and silk, National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, Freer Collection, Gift of Gregory Kinsey, Kinsey Chanoyu Collection, in honor of Louise Cort and in appreciation of her years of scholarship in support of Chanoyu education in the U.S., F2021.3.5.1a–gg–3a–e

Scroll Back To Top
  • Jump To...

  • 1050 Independence Ave. SW
    Washington, DC 20013
    202.633.1000

© 2025 Smithsonian Institution