Julie Nelson Davis of Penn Collaborates With Smithsonian

Art historian Julie Nelson Davis is partnering with the Smithsonian’s Freer|Sackler Galleries on two projects in Washington, D.C.

“It’s like a dream come true,” said Davis, a professor in the History of Art Department and the senior consulting curator at the Smithsonian’s Museums of Asian Art.

A leading expert on ukiyo-e, the “pictures of the floating world” genre in Japanese art, Davis is currently involved in an online catalog project of the Galleries’ Pulverer Collection of Japanese illustrated books and is also contributing to an upcoming exhibition about 18th-century artist Kitagawa Utamaro.

For the past year Davis has been supervising a project to bring online the Galleries’ more than 900 titles of the Gerhard Pulverer Collection of Japanese illustrated books dating from the early 17th century to the 1970s.

The collection is believed to be the most comprehensive assortment of Japanese illustrated books outside of Japan.

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