Kendall Brown
Kendall Brown is Professor of Asian Art History at . He holds a PhD. in Art History from Yale University and an MA. from UC Berkeley. He publishes in several areas of Japanese art, focusing on popular arts of the 1920s and 1930s, as well as on Japanese-style gardens in North America. From 2007-2009 he served as Curator of Exhibitions, Programs and Collections at the Pacific Asia Museum. He has curated exhibitions for several American museums, exploring topics from modern Japanese woodblock prints to Art Deco and lacquer makers’ tools. He was a co-founder and past president of the North American Japanese Garden Association, and is the author of three books and many articles on the design, political implications and cultural history of American Japanese gardens. He is currently working on an exhibition of Japanese sheet music cover illustration for the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
- PhD, Yale University, 1994
- Research Student Kyoto University, 1985-1986
- Research Student Osaka University, 1985-1986
- MA. University of California—Berkeley, 1985
- Research Student International Christian University, Tokyo, 1981-1982
- BA. University of California—Berkeley, 1981
Visionary Landscapes: Japanese Garden Design in North America, The Work of Five Contemporary Masters (Singapore: Periplus, 2017).
Quiet Beauty: The Japanese Gardens of North America (Rutland: VT: Tuttle, 2013).
Kawase Hasui: The Complete Woodblock Prints (Amsterdam: Hotei, 2004; 2nd ed. 2008).
The Politics of Reclusion: Painting and Power in Momoyama Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1997).
“Powerful Dragons and Radiant Suns: Art Deco and Japanese Militarism.” In The Routledge Companion to Art Deco, edited by Bridget Elliot and Michael Windover (NY: Routledge, 2019).
“Political Landscapes: Japanese Gardens at San Francisco’s Worlds’ Fairs of 1915 and 1939.” In Foreign Trends on American Soil, edited by Raffaella Giannetto (University of Virginia Press, 2017).
“Constructing Japan in America: American Women and Japanese Gardens.” In Inventing Asia: American Perspectives Around 1900, edited by Noriko Murai (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2013).
“Out of the Dark Valley: Japanese Prints and War, 1937-1945.” In Art and War in Japan and its Empire: 1931-1960, edited by Asato Ikeda, Aya Louisa McDonald and Ming Tiampo (Leiden: Brill, 2012).
“Practice Makes Imperfect: Weddings in Japanese-style Gardens in California.” In Ritual Practice and Performance in Gardens and Landscapes, edited by Michel Conan (Washington DC: Dumbarton Oaks/Trustees of Harvard University, 2007).
“Symbolic Virtue and Political Legitimation, Tea and Politics in the Momoyama Period.” In Asian Art: Anthology, edited by Rebecca Brown and Deborah Hutton. Blackwell Anthologies of Art History (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006).
Editor, and Lead Author, Layers of Brilliance: The Journey of Japanese Lacquer Tools (San Diego: Mingei International Museum, 2016).
Editor, and Lead Author, Water and Shadow: Kawase Hasui and Japanese Landscape Prints (Richmond: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Virginia, 2014; dist. Brill, Leiden).
Editor, and Lead Author, Traditions Transformed: The Noh Masks of Bidou Yamaguchi (University Art Museum , 2014; dist. University of Washington Press).
Editor, and Lead Author, Deco Japan: Shaping Art and Culture, 1920-1945 (Alexandria, VA: Art Services International, 2012, distributed University Washington Press, 2013).
Lead Author, Taishō Chic: Japanese Modernity, Nostalgia and Deco (Honolulu: Honolulu Academy of Arts, 2002; revised edition, 2004).
Co-author, A Japanese Legacy: Four Generations of Yoshida Family Artists (Minneapolis: Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 2002).
Co-author, Shin-hanga: New Prints in Modern Japan (Los Angeles and Seattle: Los Angeles County Museum of Art & University of Washington Press, 1996)
“Dynamic Actors and Expanding Networks: The Rise of Shin Hanga in America in the 1920s and 1930s.” In The Women of Shin Hanga: The Judith and Joseph Barker Collection of Early Twentieth-Century Japanese Prints, edited by Allen Hockley (Hannover, NH: Hood Art Museum, 2013).
“Au-delà des mers: Paul Jacoulet et les estampes du milieu du XX siècle au Japan.” In Un artiste voyageur en Micronesie, l’universe flottant de Paul Jacoulet/The Floating World of Paul Jacoulet: A Wandering Artist in Micronesia, edited by Christian Polak, (Paris: Somogy, 2013).
“Commerce, Creativity and Postcards in Japan, 1904-1940.” In Japanese Art Postcards from the Leonard Lauder Collection, edited by Anne N. Morse (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 2004).
“Re-Presenting Teika’s Flowers and Birds.” In Word in Flower: The Visualization of Classical Literature in Seventeenth-Century Japan, edited by Carolyn Wheelwright (New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 1989).
With Fredric Schneider, “Facing West: Meiji-Era Gardens at Crafts-Artists’ Studios and Art Shops,” Journal of the North American Japanese Garden Association 6 (2019).
“Lilian Miller: American Artist in Japan,” Impressions, Journal of the Japanese Art Society of America 26 (2005).
“Out of the Dark Valley: Japanese Prints and War, 1937-1945,” Impressions 23 (2001).
“Rashōmon: The Multiple Histories of the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park,” Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes, 18:2 (April 1998).
“Shokado Shojo as ‘Tea Painter’,” Chanoyu Quarterly 49 (Spring 1987).
