Julie Nelson Davis

Julie Nelson Davis

Fellow: Awarded 2021
Field of Study: Fine Arts Research

Competition: US & Canada

Julie Nelson Davis is Professor of the History of Modern Asian Art at the University of Pennsylvania. After receiving her B.A. from Reed College, Davis completed her M.A. and Ph.D at the University of Washington; she also held a Monbusho fellowship to study at Gakushūin University in Tokyo. Recognized as one of the world’s foremost authorities on Japanese prints and illustrated books, Davis is author of Utamaro and the Spectacle of Beauty (Reaktion Books, 2007 and 2021), Partners in Print: Artistic Collaboration and the Ukiyo-e Market (University of Hawai’i Press, 2015), Picturing the Floating World: Ukiyo-e in Context (University of Hawai’I Press, 2021), and more than a dozen articles and essays. Davis was guest curator for an exhibition on Utamaro (2017) and editor for the Pulverer online catalogue for the Freer and Sackler Galleries, Smithsonian; she is currently preparing an exhibition of the Arthur Tress Collection of Japanese illustrated books. Davis is working on two new projects: one on imitation, homage, and fabrication in early modern Japanese art and the second on Hokusai as a book illustrator. Davis is also Editor-in-Chief for caa.reviews and on the faculty for the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia.

Photo Credit: Camille Davis

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