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2027 ILS Speakers

Monday, November 30, 2026 at 4:30pm | Cross-Cultural Currents: Water in 19th-Century Japanese, French, and American Art
Noriko Murai, PhD, Professor of Art History in the Faculty of Liberal Arts and the Graduate Program in Global Studies at Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan

From Hokusai’s churning Great Wave to Monet’s serene Water Lilies and Homer’s dramatic seascapes, water emerged as a defining motif of the modern era. In the late nineteenth century, the rise of steamships suddenly connected distant worlds at unprecedented speeds, launching a new age of global travel between hubs like Yokohama, London, and New York. In this lecture, Dr. Noriko Murai explores the ocean as both a literal highway for cross-cultural exchange and a profound artistic symbol, examining how nineteenth-century artists captured water’s volatile, ever-changing fluidity as a mirror for a rapidly shifting modern world.

Murai received her PhD from Harvard University and is Professor of Art History in the Faculty of Liberal Arts and the Graduate School of Global Studies at Sophia University, Tokyo, where she teaches the history of modern art with a focus on Japan and Japonisme. Her research interests include cross-cultural exchanges, art historiography, and women’s participation in the arts. A bilingual scholar working in Japanese and English, her publications in English include Journeys East: Isabella Stewart Gardner and Asia (2009), Inventing Asia: American Perspectives Around 1900 (2014), Japan in the Heisei Era (1989–2019): Multidisciplinary Perspectives (2022), and Japan and Japonisme: The Self and the Other in Representations of Japanese Culture (2025).

Monday, January 11, 2027 at 4:30pm | Hiroshige’s One Hundred Famous Views of Edo: Behind the Scenes of a Celebrated Japanese Woodblock Print Series
Andreas Marks, PhD, Mary Griggs Burke Curator of Japanese and Korean Art and Director of the Clark Center for Japanese Art at the Minneapolis Institute of Art

​Some of Utagawa Hiroshige’s designs in his series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo are amongst the best-known woodblock prints and have been cherished since their inception in the 1850s. Hiroshige captured 118 different scenes in the metropolis of Edo, today’s Tokyo. Precious deluxe versions were printed, incorporating many special printing features like color gradation. During the course of production, significant changes were made to some of them. Focusing on the One Hundred Views, this talk will look into the complexity and mechanics of the popular print market in Japan in the 19th century.

Dr. Andreas Marks received his PhD from Leiden University with a dissertation on 19th-century actor prints. Since 2013, he has been the Mary Griggs Burke Curator of Japanese and Korean Art and Director of the Clark Center for Japanese Art at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. His research has earned the International Ukiyo-e Society Award and the International Fine Print Dealers Association’s top book award twice (2018 and 2022). In 2024, he received a commendation from the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs for his contributions to promoting Japanese culture. He is the author of almost 30 books, including The (almost) complete Hokusai and Japanese Yokai and Other Supernatural Beings.

Monday, February 1, 2027 at 4:30pm | The World Within the Image
Pico Iyer, Best-selling Author, Journalist, and Travel Writer

Can seasons serve as a secret religion? How can 1+ 1 add up to 3? And when do baseball games end in a tie? After 39 years living around the ancient Japanese capitals of Kyoto and Nara, best-selling writer Pico Iyer will explain how the unique perspectives seen in Japanese artwork reflect the distinctive values, priorities, and beliefs of the layered and enigmatic culture all around them. Trees are designated as official city guardians in Japan, emotions are kept out of public life, and even as the country is ever more modern and advanced, deep down it remains very much the world evoked by Hiroshige and Hokusai. With warm descriptions of everyday life in a small community, he will ask whether Japan might not at heart be an indigenous culture dressed in the cool clothes of the 21st century.

Pico Iyer is the author of 18 books, translated into 23 languages, including such best-sellers as The Art of Stillness, The Open Road, The Half Known Life and Aflame. His five talks for TED have received more than 12 million views so far, and he has been interviewed by Oprah Winfrey, Larry King, Terry Gross and many others. Through his work he has been honored with a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Robert Kirsch Lifetime Award and induction into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

PRESENTING SPONSOR:
Harry and Virginia Van Wormer Lecture Fund 

SUPPORTING SPONSORS:
Kjestine and Peter Bijur
FHL Foundation
Emily and Ned Sherwood
Carolyn and William Stutt Endowment for the International Lecture Series
Caroline and Tommy Vandeventer 

PATRON SPONSORS:
Susan L. Bouma
Lisa and Willie Bullock
Kenneth W. Cunningham, Jr. Endowment Fund 

RECEPTION SPONSOR: