Still Making Waves: Charles Lang Freer and Sotatsu’s Waves at Matsushima

Join Dr. Frank Feltens to learn about a celebrated pair of Japanese painted folding screens, their Detroit history, and the innovative technology now making them accessible to new audiences. In 1906, industrialist and collector Charles Lang Freer acquired Waves at Matsushima by Tawaraya Sotatsu (active ca. 1600–43) and displayed them in his Detroit home.

After his death in 1919, his collection traveled to Washington, DC, to form the Freer Gallery of Art (now part of the National Museum of Asian Art, NMAA), the Smithsonian’s first art museum. Recently, Canon, Inc., the Kyoto Culture Association, and NMAA have created stunning high-resolution reproductions of these screens, using a combination of advanced technology and traditional craft.

These facsimiles, created by the Tsuzuri Project, can travel to locations in Japan and beyond, fulfilling Freer’s and the museum’s goal of cross-cultural understanding between Asia and America through the arts.

Frank Feltens is Curator of Japanese Art at the National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution. A native of Germany, he received his PhD in art history from Columbia University. He is a specialist in Japanese painting with a particular focus on the late medieval and early modern eras. 

This lecture is sponsored by the Detroit Institute of Arts’ Friends of Asian Arts and Cultures, the Freer House, and the Japan-America Society of Michigan and Southwestern Ontario. Additional support comes from Wayne State University, the Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute, the National Association of Japan-America Societies, the United States-Japan Foundation, and the US-Japan Foundation Curators’ Perspective.