DEKALB, IL.- The Northern Illinois University Art Museum will host three exhibitions featuring works from the Richard F. Grott Family Collection to celebrate his donation and explore the highlights of his collection in the context of their cultural and art historical significance. The museum will host three exhibitions: “Ukiyo-e Prints from the Richard F. Grott Family Collection”, “Revisiting Modern Japanese Prints: Selected Works from the Richard F. Grott Family Collection”, and “Japanese Pottery from the Richard F. Grott Family Collection” from January 15 – March 7, 2008. The public is invited to a Gala Reception on Thursday, January 24, from 4:30 – 7:30 p.m. The Japanese American Service Committee of Chicago Tsukasa Taiko Drummers will give a traditional Japanese drumming demonstration during the reception at 5:15 p.m. and again at 6:00 p.m. The JASC Tsukasa Taiko drum ensemble will perform later that evening at 8 p.m. at Boutell Music Hall.

The donation of Japanese modern prints and traditional ukiyo-e woodblock prints to the NIU Art Museum from Richard F. Grott spawned the multifaceted “National/International Consciousness in Japan: Self, Place, and Society during the Nineteenth, Twentieth, and Twenty-first Centuries” project, which will also include original installation art by Ayomi Yoshida, a contemporary Japanese artist descended from the notable print artist and painter Hiroshi Yoshida. The “National/International Consciousness in Japan " project involves visual arts displays in all four galleries of the NIU Art Museum, a student art competition, a catalogue of student and scholar essays entitled Revisiting Modern Japanese Prints: Selected Works from the Richard F. Grott Family Collection, a student-developed website, international chat project, and a professional speaker and performance series. This extensive project has been guest-curated by NIU Art History Assistant Professor Helen Nagata and NIU Professor Emerita Helen Merritt assisted by NIU Art Museum staff. For information on upcoming related events, including an art history lecture and a hands-on children’s art activity, please check the museum’s website: www.vpa.niu.edu/museum.

Richard F. Grott, head of his own consulting firm, Richard G. Enterprises, Inc., spent twenty-five years in top-level management with Encyclopaedia Britannica and fifteen years living and working in Asia. He not only collected modern prints, but actually met many of the famous artists associated with the sôsaku hanga movement.

Selections from Mr. Grott’s donation and family collection display the fundamental differences between Japan’s ukiyo-e tradition of the Edo period (1615-1867) and modern twentieth-century prints. “Ukiyo-e Prints from the Richard F. Grott Family Collection” will feature over twenty ukiyo-e woodblock prints. This exhibition will introduce technical and thematic features of the traditional multicolor woodblock prints created through publishers who brought together the expert skills of carvers, printers, and designers. “Revisiting Modern Japanese Prints: Selected Works from the Richard F. Grott Family Collection” will present over forty twentieth-century Japanese prints primarily of the sôsaku hanga movement. Artists in this vein represented a clear departure from the traditional collaborative/commercial “craft” of the ukiyo-e print tradition. Sôsaku Hanga artists sought to exert their originality and expressive powers as modern artists by creating prints with their own hands. A catalog with an essay co-authored by NIU Professor Emerita Helen Merritt and NIU Art History Assistant Professor Helen Nagata alongside research and writing from NIU undergraduate and graduate students from a seminar on Japanese prints in Spring 2007 will supplement this exhibition. Selections from Mr. Grott’s Japanese pottery collection will also be featured in a small display curated by NIU Professor Emerita Helen Merritt.

The NIU Art Museum is located on the first floor, west end of Altgeld Hall, the “castle,” at the northwest corner of College and Castle Drives on the NIU campus in DeKalb. The galleries are open to the public Tuesday – Friday 10 a.m. – 5 p.m., Saturday 12 noon – 4 p.m., and by appointment for group tours. Pay parking is available in the Visitor’s Lot on Carroll Avenue and at metered spots in front of Altgeld Hall. Free parking is available on Saturdays, and during receptions and visiting artist lectures in the lot northeast of Gilbert and College Drives. Exhibitions are free. The catalogue, website, and taiko drum performance are supported in part by a Venture Grant from the NIU Foundation and the James and Helen Merritt Foundation of the School of Art. The taiko drum performance is also supported in part by the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency. The related children's art activity is funded in part by Target. The exhibitions of the NIU Art Museum are funded in part by the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, the Friends of the NIU Art Museum, and the Arts Fund 21. For more information, please visit our website: www.vpa.niu.edu/museum