Meher McArthur was born in India to a Scottish father and Persian mother and grew up in Scotland, Canada, and England feeling very out of place. Hoping to go into international business, she studied Japanese at college and lived in Japan for two years but fell in love with Japanese art and took a new direction. She became a Japanese art historian and has been passionately curating Japanese art exhibitions in museums and galleries and for national tour for over 25 years. This lecture is a sneak preview of her new memoir (October 2025) and will highlight some of the most significant art works in her life and career and show how Japanese art helped her find her place in the world.

Speaker bio: Meher McArthur is an Asian art historian specializing in Japanese art. She worked as a curator of East Asian Art at Pacific Asia Museum and Creative Director for the Storrier Stearns Japanese Garden, both in Pasadena and was Academic Curator for Scripps College in Claremont and Art and Cultural Director for Japan House, Los Angeles. She curates traveling exhibitions for International Arts & Artists (IA&A), currently Washi Transformed: New Expressions in Japanese Paper and upcoming KIMONO: Garment, Canvas, and Artistic Muse. Her publications include Gods and Goblins: Folk Paintings from Otsu (PAM, 1999), Reading Buddhist Art (Thames & Hudson, 2002), The Arts of Asia (Thames & Hudson, 2005), An ABC of What Art Can Be (Getty Museum, 2010), New Expressions in Origami Art (Tuttle, 2017), and Washi Transformed: New Expressions in Japanese Paper (IA&A, 2021). She lives in Pasadena, California.

Please note, this session will be conducted virtually via Zoom.

Sponsored by the Asian Arts Council.