Deco Japan: Shaping Art and Culture, 1920-1945

Originating in Europe, the new art form art deco, flourished from the 1920s to 1940s. Characterized by rectilinear shapes, geometric patterns, and bold colors, art deco served as an international ambassador for modernism and style. Deco Japan explores how the Japanese interpreted the style and transformed it through their own rich art and craft traditions. The art deco creations of Japan are vivid translations of both tradition and innovation—a visual record of the artistic explosion that ushered Japan from its conventional artistic format into the Modern era.

Featuring a wide range of media—sculpture, painting, prints,ceramics, lacquerware, jewelry, textiles, furniture, and graphicephemera—this traveling exhibition brings Japanese art deco to Washington for the first time. It builds on the passion that Hillwood founder Marjorie Merriweather Post had for decorative art, focusing on her most transformative era, when she epitomized the flapper lifestyle and developed her own taste for finely-crafted objects. Displayed in multiple buildings upon the 25-acre campus, Deco Japan will also bring focus to the Japanese-style Garden, one of Hillwood’s most beloved features.

Whether you go or not, Deco Japan: Shaping Art and Culture, 1920-1945 introduces Japanese art in the art deco style through nearly two hundred works of metal, ceramics, lacquer, glass, furniture, textiles, painting, prints, and graphic design