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Collections Not On View

Japanese Art

The collection of Japanese art features some 2500 woodblock prints from the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as a smaller holdings of modern prints, folk art ceramics, and modern photographs. Formed between 1990 and the present, the prints collection supports the College's curriculum in Fine Arts, Asian Languages and Civilization, and Theater and Dance, and relates to materials at Frost Library. The collection of woodblock prints (ukiyo-e) is one of the largest and most significant at an academic museum with particular strength in theatrical, literary, and figurative subjects by such artists as Toyokuni, Hokusai, Utamaro, Kunisada, Shigemasa, and Hiroshige. It includes also a large number of rare poetry and calendar formats (surinomo and e-goyomi).

Morrow Collection of Mexican Folk Art

The Mead Art Museum has a significant collection of Mexican folk art assembled by Dwight W. Morrow (Amherst College, Class of 1895) and his wife Elizabeth Cutter during Morrow's tenure as the United States Ambassador to Mexico in the late 1920s.  Highlights include rare lacquered trays and boxes from the Mexican states of Guerrero and Michoacán, ceramics from Puebla, Oaxaca, Jalisco, and Guanajuato, and textiles from Zacatecas and Coahuila.

The Mead Art Museum's Morrow Collection of Mexican folk art is one of the most important in the United States. The Morrows, among the vanguard of early collectors, purchased most of these antique and contemporary objects for Casa Mañana, their weekend residence in the resort town of Cuernavaca. Morrow also commissioned a mural by Mexico's leading artist Diego Rivera. The Morrows believed that Mexico’s visual arts would complement political and economic negotiations and facilitate greater understanding across the border. More than a retreat, Casa Mañana was a sympathetic gesture of goodwill and a visual declaration of allegiance to the indigenista rhetoric of the post-Revolutionary era, which placed native Mexican culture at the heart of national identity. In 1955 the Morrow family gave a selection of 159 pieces to the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College. These works offer a rich resource that documents the transformation of functional, everyday objects into objects that carry both aesthetic and national significance.