Ph.D. student Christy Sher traveled to Philadelphia to conduct research on the Arthur Tress Collection of Japanese Illustrated Books and Prints at the University of Pennsylvania. She visited the corresponding exhibition which features highlights from the collection, including an eighteenth-century manuscript, landscape studies, painting manuals, poetry books, a broadsheet that describes a kabuki play based on a murder case, as well as pattern books for textile, ceramic, and lacquerware design. As part of her dissertation research, Christy hopes to find first-hand materials from the Edo and Meiji periods of Japanese illustrated books and prints.

While there, Christy also visited the special exhibition Modigliani Up Close at the Barnes Foundation. The Department of History of Art generously supported this research trip.