Pictures Run Riot: Exhibiting Manga at the British Museum and at the de Young Museum

This event is free and open to the public.

The Center for Asia Pacific Studies welcomes Nicole Rousmaniere, curator of the Art of Manga exhibition at the de Young Museum, for a talk on curating manga and what it reveals about the medium’s future.

Manga and anime have captured global attention like never before. In the U.S., print manga sales are skyrocketing, while in Europe the medium has long been celebrated as a form of visual storytelling. Britain, however, has been slower to embrace it - until the British Museum’s 2019 Citi Manga exhibition, which showcased over 50 artists and broke new ground by centering contemporary manga in its main gallery, attracting record and diverse audiences.

Today, the de Young Museum presents a different focus: genga, the art of manga drawings, highlighting 10 mangaka with in-depth explorations of 8 artists.

Nicole Rousmaniere, who curated these exhibitions, will discuss the challenges and opportunities of curating manga - from working with artists and publishers to navigating cultural expectations - and share insights into what these exhibitions reveal about the future of the medium.

Speaker Bio: 
Dr. Nicole Coolidge Rousmaniere is the founding Director and current Research Director of the Sainsbury Institute and Professor of Japanese Art and Culture at the University of East Anglia, Norwich. She is the author of Vessels of Influence: China and the Birth of Porcelain in Medieval and Modern Japan (Bloomsbury Academic, 2012) and the translator of Professor Tsuji Nobuo’s A History of Art in Japan (Tokyo University Press, 2018; reissued by Columbia University Press, 2020), among other publications. She was the lead curator of the 2019 Citi Exhibition Manga at the British Museum and is currently curating the Art of Manga exhibit at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, running through January 25, 2026.

This event is co-sponsored by the Asian Studies and Museum Studies programs.