08/12/2026
Museum Highlight — The Floating World Emerges: Japanese Prints from the Clarence Buckingham Collection at Art Institute Chicago
"The ideology that would become known as the floating world (ukiyo) developed following the great fire of 1657 in which vast portions of the city of Edo (now Tokyo) were destroyed.
Just a few years after that fire, in 1665, author Asai Ryōi described what this attitude was: 'living only for the moment, turning our full attention to the pleasures of the moon, the snow, the cherry blossoms and the maples, singing songs, drinking w**e, and diverting ourselves just in floating, floating, caring not a whit for the poverty staring us in the face, refusing to be disheartened, like a gourd floating along with the river current: This is what we call ukiyo.'” —
The Floating World Emerges: Japanese Prints from the Clarence Buckingham Collection is curated by Janice Katz, Roger L. Weston Curator of Japanese Art, Arts of Asia.
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Kaigetsudo Anchi
Courtesan Walking, 1709–1719
Hand-colored woodblock print; tan-e, vertical o-oban
55.2 Ă— 28.8 cm (21 3/4 Ă— 11 3/8 in.)
Clarence Buckingham Collection
1925.1741
Sugimura Jihei
An Interrupted Embrace, 1680–1690
Hand-colored woodblock print; oban, sumizuri-e
27 Ă— 37.8 cm (10 5/8 Ă— 14 7/8 in.)
Clarence Buckingham Collection
1925.1687
Ishikawa Toyonobu
The Actor Segawa Kikunojo I as a courtesan, 1742–1752
Hand-colored woodblock print; vertical oban diptych, beni-e
69.6 Ă— 25.2 cm (27 1/2 Ă— 10 in.)
Clarence Buckingham Collection
1925.2252
