Events

Kabuki actors were superstars in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Japan. They were admired by passionate fans with an insatiable appetite for images of them, fed by a publishing industry that mass-produced colorful woodblock prints of actors on stage which could act as substitutes for a theater experience. Join a tour with UMMA docents of Japanese Prints of Kabuki Theater from the Collection of the University of Michigan Museum of Art and discover these dramatic prints by major artists that include off- or backstage portrayals, fantasy scenes of actors in unlikely groupings, and even death portraits of especially famous actors.