Exhibition: A Voyage to the Floating World

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floatingworld

Once isolated and mysterious, Japan captured the world’s imagination when it opened its doors to outsiders in the mid-nineteenth century. The colorful urban lifestyle of this era was chronicled by artists of a genre known as ukiyo-e. From geisha, samurai, kabuki actors, and kimonos, to scenes from history, mythology, and nature, these “pictures of the floating world” portrayed ordinary life in an extraordinary way.

Western onlookers, accustomed to ostentation and excess, found Japanese visual culture refreshingly simple. By the 1880s, artists and designers in Europe and America had fallen in love with the understated and yet vibrant styles of their Japanese counterparts. Many, in fact, imitated it in their own work. Cultural exchange ran both ways, and in Japan, Western art exerted a strong influence during the period of rapid modernization that eventually swept Japan onto the world stage.

A new exhibition from the LSU Libraries’ Special Collections features a wide range of rare books, prints, and photographs that provide a snapshot of Japan at the moment of its transition from a feudal state to a modern superpower. “A Voyage to the Floating World: Japanese Illustrated Books and East-West Cultural Exchange in the Nineteenth Century” will be on display in Hill Memorial Library from February 22 to May 14, 2016.

Japanese publications from the Edo and Meiji Periods (1603-1912) are the focus of the library’s upstairs gallery, which includes examples of natural history illustration, fiction, poetry, erotica, theater guides, maps, and war propaganda. The first-floor section of the exhibit tells the story of early Western encounters with Japan, as well as Japanese artists’ influence on the Impressionist and Art Nouveau movements.

“This exhibition is different from anything we’ve ever done before, and the timing is perfect,” said Michael Taylor, Curator of Books for the LSU Libraries. Five courses on Asian history and art are being taught at LSU this semester, as well as courses on printmaking and graphic design. Taylor hopes students will take advantage of this opportunity to connect course content with the library’s collections of historical materials.

Many of the works on display are recent acquisitions, collected to expand our holdings of teaching material on world cultures and the global history of the book. “Exposing students to international cultures has never been more important,” Taylor commented. “It not only sparks their curiosity and creativity, but also nurtures a cultural awareness that will help them in their future careers, especially if they’ll be working with people from other countries. Even if you can’t travel abroad, there are fascinating things from all around the world waiting to be explored right here at LSU.”

Taylor co-curated the exhibition with Glauco Adorno, an LSU art history graduate student originally from Brazil. “The exhibit showcases an amazing range of material,” Adorno said. “I think it’s relevant not only to those interested in Japanese art, but also the history of art in a global context.”

The exhibition is free and open to the public. For more information, contact the library at (225) 578-6544.

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Recent faculty publications

2022

Kelsey, Sigrid, ed. Fostering Student Success: Academic, Social, and Financial Initiatives, ALA Editions, 2022.

2021

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O’Neill, Brittany and Rebecca Kelley. “Delivering Bad News: Crisis Communication Methods in Academic Libraries,” College & Research Libraries, Volume 82, Issue 3 (May 2021). https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.82.3.310

Connel, Ruth Sara; Lisa C. Wallis; David Comeaux. “The Impact of COVID-19 on the Use of Academic Library Resources,” Information Technology and Libraries. Volume 40, Issue 2 (2021). https://doi.org/10.6017/ital.v40i2.12629

O’Neill, B. (2021).”Three-layer primary source dip: Introducing history students to primary source research through active learning.” In The teaching with primary sources cookbook, edited by J. M. Porterfield, 16-18. Association of College & Research Libraries, 2021.

2020 

Blessinger, Kelly and Dave Comeaux. “User Experience with a New Public Interface for an Integrated Library System,” Information Technology in Libraries. Volume 39, Issue 1. https://doi.org/10.6017/ital.v39i1.11607

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Diamond, Tom, ed. The Academic Librarian in the Digital Age: Essays on Changing Roles and Responsibilities. McFarland, 2020.

Kelley, Rebecca and Mitch Fontenot. “Serving our Student Veterans in Louisiana,” Louisiana Libraries. Volume 82, Issue 2 (Spring 2020).

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Lounsberry, Megan. “Troubleshooting electronic resources from an ILL perspective,” Technical Services Quarterly, Volume 37, Issue 3.
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Borchardt, Rachel; Polly Boruff-Jones; Sigrid Kelsey; and Jennifer Matthews, “A Proposed Framework for the Evaluation of Academic Librarian Scholarship” (2019). Proceedings of the Charleston Library Conference.

Comeaux, Dave;  Emily Frank; and Mike Waugh. “Supporting Student Success: E-books as Course Materials,” CODEX: Journal of the Louisiana Chapter of the ACRL. Volume 5, Issue 2 (Fall/Winter 2019).

Dunaway, David. “Bibliometrics for Faculty Evaluation: A Stastical Comparison of h-indexes Generated Using Google Scholar and Web of Science Data,” CODEX: Journal of the Louisiana Chapter of the ACRL. Volume 5, Issue 3 (Fall/Winter 2019).

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Hawk, Amanda K. “Implementing Standardized Statistical Measures and Metrics for Public Services in Archival Repositories and Special Collections Libraries,” Proceedings of the 2018 Library Assessment Conference, (Association of Research Libraries, 2019): 836-843. https://doi.org/10.29242/lac.2018.78

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Miles, John David. “Colfax, Kate Grant, and the Domestication of Reconstruction’s Violence,” Civil War Book Review. Volume 21, Issue 2 (Spring 2019).

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O’Neill, Brittany; and  Allen LeBlanc. “Evaluating Trends in Instruction Scheduling Management: A Survey of Louisiana’s Academic Libraries,” CODEX: Journal of the Louisiana Chapter of the ACRL. Volume 5, Issue 2 (Fall/Winter 2019).

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Ziegler, Scott; and Richard Shrake. “PAL: Toward a Recommendation System for Manuscripts,” Information Technology and Libraries, Vol. 37, No. 3 (2018).

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Caminita, C.; Cook, M.; and Paster, A. (2017). Thirty years of preserving, discovering, and accessing U.S. agricultural information: Past progress and current challenges. Library Trends, 65(3), 293-315.

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