Asakura Mitsuko: Eight Views

Asakura Mitsuko brings Eight Views to the Seattle Asian Art Museum on February 12, 2027, and it's a long-haul show—it runs through February 13, 2028. The centerpiece is a series of eight tapestries commissioned by the Seattle Art Museum, all hanging in the Garden Court of the landmarked 1933 Art Deco building in Volunteer Park. Beside them, you'll find other works from across her career, which spans more than half a century.

Asakura has spent her life working with woven tapestry, an art form she sees as capable of transforming the human activities and experiences that unfold within architectural spaces. She grew up immersed in textiles in Kyoto, near Muromachi and Nishijin—areas long associated with kimono and silk weaving—and studied with the Dutch weaver Loes van der Horst in the late 1970s. Eight Views (hakkei 八景) draws on the East Asian tradition rooted in the poetry and painting of the Song-Di period and carried to Japan by Zen monks. Asakura has said she set out to show "the form of this world that cannot be grasped from a single point of view" through eight different viewpoints.

Since the 1970s, she's focused on public and semipublic art, and her work has been exhibited and collected by museums including the National Museum of Modern Art Kyoto, the Miho Museum, the Japan Society in New York, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the British Museum. Eight Views is a Seattle Art Museum commission, so these eight tapestries are new to the city. They'll be on view in the Garden Court from February 12, 2027, through February 13, 2028.