Japanese Collection

The collection of postwar Japanese graphic design includes some 1,000 posters from the 1950s to the 1990s by the country’s most innovative designers including, Kiyoshi Awazu, Shigeo Fukuda, Takenobu Igarashi, Kazumasa Nagai, Koichi Sato, Keiichi Tanaami, Ikko Tanaka, and Tadanori Yooko.

This collection was recently profiled in the interview “Collecting Japanese Posters: Merrill C. Berman in Conversation with Erin Schoneveld” in Impressions: The Journal of the Japanese Art Society of America, no. 45, part two of double issue (2024): 63–97.

It also formed the basis of two exhibitions: Nozomi Naoi and Erin Schoneveld’s Made in Japan: 20th-Century Poster Art, Poster House, New York (March 2, 2023–September 10, 2023) and Peter Nisbet’s Elegance & Extravagance: Japanese Posters from the Merrill C. Berman Collection, Ackland Art Museum, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (September 7, 2012–January 6, 2013).

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Periodicals

Shashin shūhō (Photographic Weekly Report; 1938–1945) February 9, 2021

Posters

Made in Japan: 20th-Century Poster Art as installed at Poster House, New York March 14, 2023

Posters by Yūsaku Kamekura (Japanese, 1915–1997) November 8, 2022

Exhibition Announcement: Made in Japan: 20th Century Poster Art & Design, Poster House, New York June 7, 2022

Posters: Kazumasa Nagai (Japanese, born 1929) January 25, 2022

A Selection of Japanese Posters January 11, 2022