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Jeannie M. Kenmotsu, a curator and scholar of Japanese art, has been appointed the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Curator of Asian Art at the Harvard Art Museums. She will begin her role in mid December.
Kenmotsu currently serves as the Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Curator of Asian Art at the Portland Art Museum, where she has been a member of the curatorial team since 2017. During her tenure, she organized Yoshida Chizuko, the first major museum retrospective devoted to the modernist Japanese painter and printmaker. She also guided the presentation of Asian art during a transformative renovation project and planned the reinstallation of the museum’s Asian art galleries, which opened in November 2025.
For Portland, she also curated or co-curated numerous other exhibitions, including Monet’s Floating Worlds at Giverny: Portland’s “Waterlilies” Resurfaces (2025); Forces of Nature: Ecology in Japanese Prints (2022), Shades of Light: Korean Art from the Collection (2022), Joryū Hanga Kyōkai, 1956–1965: Japan’s Women Printmakers (2020–21), and Objects of Contact: Encounters between Japan and the West (2020–21).
At the Harvard Art Museums, Kenmotsu will oversee the Japanese art collection, which comprises approximately 9,000 paintings, prints, and other objects such as ceramics and lacquerware, and which spans from the Neolithic period to the present. She brings expertise in the art of early modern Japan, with special emphasis on illustrated books, paintings, and prints of the Edo period (1615–1868).
Kenmotsu’s responsibilities will include stewarding a major bequest of approximately 300 Edo and Meiji period works from the collection of Robert and Betsy Feinberg. She will plan a series of installations in the museums’ galleries featuring works from their collection, develop new temporary exhibitions and design public programs that highlight the diversity of the Japanese art holdings. She will also work with faculty and students to expand the collection’s role in teaching and research.
“I am delighted to welcome Jeannie,” said Sarah Ganz Blythe, the Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director of the Harvard Art Museums. “Her dedication to Japanese art across centuries, combined with her extensive experience in museum and academic settings, will make her a valuable addition to our learning and research community, deepening and broadening the scope of our work.”
“I am thrilled to join the remarkable team at the Harvard Art Museums during an exciting chapter in the institution’s history,” said Kenmotsu. “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 is a Senior Fellow of the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography in the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia. Prior to the Portland Art Museum, she was a visiting assistant professor of art history at Scripps College and a visiting research scholar at Keio University in Tokyo. She has also held curatorial positions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Museum. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Pomona College and master’s and doctoral degrees in the history of art from the University of Pennsylvania.
The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Curatorship of Asian Art was established at the Harvard Art Museums in 2007 through a gift from David Rockefeller S.B. ’36, LL.D. (honorary) ’69, in honor of his mother, a pioneering collector of Asian art.
