Opening Reception: The Blooming Mirror

Wednesday, February 18, 2026 at 12:00pm
College of East Asian Studies Gallery at Mansfield Freeman Center

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Free and open to the public.

Reception includes a celebratory luncheon.

The symbolism of many plants and flowers has long been codified across Japanese art, from seasonal floral motifs on kimonos to poetic tropes in classical literature. In an era of refined court culture that prized allusive expression, plants and their manipulated forms, such as classical flower arrangements [rikka], embodied moral and emotional subtexts that transgressed cultural anxieties and taboos. Featuring homoerotic encounters, courtly love stories, and meditations on transience, the exhibition The Blooming Mirror explores the myriad aesthetic and affective functions of cultivated Japanese nature, presenting objects from Wesleyan’s College of East Asian Studies Art and Archival Collection and facsimiles of Japanese literati paintings and narrative handscrolls that employ plants as semiotic vessels.

The exhibition was curated by Maxwell Maveus ’26 as part of a tutorial in curatorial practice led by Assistant Director of Exhibitions and Assistant Curator of Education Rosemary Lennox and Associate Director and Curator of Visual Arts Benjamin Chaffee ’00. Exhibition support provided by the College of East Asian Studies.

This exhibition will be closed from Saturday, March 7 through Monday, March 23, 2026.

Admission is free, and everyone is welcome. We encourage you to RSVP to help us with our planning and to get a reminder the day before this event. While RSVPs are not required for entry, they are a big help!

Image: detail from Itō Jakuchū’s Lotus Pond and Fish (蓮池遊漁図), c. 1761–1765. Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk. 142.6 x 79.9 cm.