Jeannie M. Kenmotsu Appointed Curator of Asian Art at the Harvard Art Museums

The Harvard Art Museums have announced the appointment of Jeannie M. Kenmotsu as the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Curator of Asian Art. She will join the museums’ Division of Asian and Mediterranean Art on 14 December 2026.

Kenmotsu currently serves as the Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Curator of Asian Art at the Portland Art Museum, where she has worked since 2017. Her recent projects include Yoshida Chizuko, the first major museum retrospective dedicated to the modernist Japanese painter and printmaker, and the reinstallation of the museum’s Asian art galleries, which reopened in November 2025.

Her exhibitions at Portland have also included Forces of Nature: Ecology in Japanese Prints (2022), Shades of Light: Korean Art from the Collection (2022) and Joryū Hanga Kyōkai, 1956–1965: Japan’s Women Printmakers (2020–21). Alongside her curatorial work, Kenmotsu has helped expand the museum’s holdings of modern and contemporary Asian art.

At Harvard, Kenmotsu will oversee a collection of approximately 9,000 works of Japanese art spanning the Neolithic period to the present. She will also steward a recent bequest of around 300 Edo- and Meiji-period works from the collection of Robert and Betsy Feinberg.

Her responsibilities will include developing new collection displays and temporary exhibitions, creating public programmes and supporting the use of the collection in teaching and research across Harvard. Her academic expertise centres on early modern Japanese art, particularly illustrated books, paintings and prints from the Edo period, while her wider interests encompass contemporary Asian art, collecting histories and diasporic creative practices.

“I look forward to pursuing new research, foregrounding the museums’ rich collection of Japanese art, and developing exhibitions and projects that engage the wider Harvard community and beyond,” Kenmotsu said.

Before joining the Portland Art Museum, Kenmotsu held academic and curatorial positions at Scripps College, Keio University, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Museum. She holds an MA and PhD in History of Art from the University of Pennsylvania.

Image: Jeannie M. Kenmotsu. Photo by Marty Moore.