The Three-Thousandfold Universe:

130 Masterpieces from the Nara National Museum

THURSDAY, JUNE 12 | 6PM EDT

FRIDAY, JUNE 13 | 7AM JST

About the Event:

This year marks 130 years since the Narahaku (Nara National Museum) was established on April 29, 1895, a museum that has since become highly renowned for its Buddhist art. In commemoration of the 130th anniversary, the museum's curators and photographer Tomohiro Muda selected 130 masterpieces from its collection of about 2,000 works which Muda then captured in the recently published art book The Three-Thousandfold Universe: 130 Masterpieces from the Nara National Museum.

Join us to hear from the photographer, Tomohiro Muda, the Chief Curator of Buddhist Decorative Art at the Nara National Museum, Kakuyuki Mita, and the Chief Editor of Kyuryudo Art Publishing, Kyoko Shimizu.

You can purchase a copy of this beautiful bilingual photography book of Buddhist art here.

This is a free, hour-long presentation hosted on Zoom.

About The Speakers:

Tomohiro Muda | Photographer

Tomohiro Muda was born in Nara Prefecture in 1956 and graduated from Waseda University in 1980. In 1982, Muda began living in a Sherpa village in the Himalayas. The photographs he took there became the subject of his first solo exhibition, “The Land of Sherpa” (1988). Driven by his search for fundamental connections between humanity, the natural world, and the universe as a whole, he has since photographed an expansive range of subjects including rocks, water, walls, plants, people, roads, landscapes, and the aftermath of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake.

His work has been showcased in art galleries around the world as well as in photography collections, magazines, and online publications. In addition to Japan’s Buddhist sculptures and cultural heritage, Muda has often turned his lens to Romanesque art and megalithic cultural sites across Europe together with historic Buddhist sites throughout Asia.

Kakuyuki Mita | Chief Curator of Buddhist Decorative Art, Nara National Museum

Kakuyuki Mita specializes in Japanese and Oriental art history. He has been researching Buddhist art with a focus on Asuka and Nara period art. In recent years, he has been studying the Buddhist decorative art of Horyuji temple (especially the banners and pedestal paintings of Buddhist statues), but he also hopes to conduct comprehensive art research from a wider perspective.

Kyoko Shimizu | Chief Editor, Kyuryudo Art Publishing

Editor of Kyuryudo, an art book publisher founded in 1923. Kyuryudo celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2023. The name of the company, Kyuryu comes from the French word “CURIEUX,” which means “to seek artistic or intellectual curiosity” or “to always seek the new.” Kyuryudo decided to publish this new book to present the masterpieces of the Nara National Museum, highly renowned for Buddhist Art, in a new form. This is the second book they published with Photographer Tomohiro Muda, the first one being Unkei.

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