Hokusai: Inspiration and Influence (MFA Boston)

Dates: March 26 to July 16, 2023

Location: Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Avenue

Katsushika Hokusai’s “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” is one of the most famous and most recognizable paintings of all time, so much so that Apple’s wave emoji is based on it.

Hokusai experimented with a wide range of styles and subjects throughout his career of over 70 years. The MFA will be showing over 90 woodblock prints, paintings, and illustrated books of his during their exhibition. The exhibition is unique in how it focuses in detail on Hokusai’s impact on other artists, during his lifetime and beyond.

Audiences can view works by his daughter, Katsushika Ōi, his contemporaries Utagawa Hiroshige and Utagawa Kuniyoshi, the 19th-century French Japonistes, and modern and contemporary artists including Loïs Mailou Jones, Yayoi Kusama, John Cederquist, and Yoshitomo Nara.