【Soon】Special Exhibition “Aves Japonicae 〈11〉 – Are Crows black?”

2025.07.19-2025.10.19
STUDIOLO

Crows are familiar birds to Japanese people. Their all-black plumage blends well with the monotone of ink paintings, and they have often been used as a motif in Japanese paintings.
This exhibition features Kawabe Kakyo’s “Sketches of birds”, Vol. 19, “the Crow.” This series of scrolls is a reference book for drawing birds, and even the number of flight feathers is recorded. It can be said to be a specimen drawn on paper. It also functions as a collection of poses.
Many of the crows drawn here are deliberately colorless, and each feather is depicted with line drawings. At first glance, these paintings do not look like crows. This may be evidence that we perceive crows as "black objects." However, if you look at them not in terms of color, but as objects that consist of overlapping feathers, the crows appear exactly like this.
It will be the same in crows as living creatures. Although they are close to us, we rarely have the opportunity to closely observe crows, rather tend to avoid them. This time, we will exhibit taxidermies and Japanese paintings side by side, that provides you to observe the realistic appearance of crows in detail, rather than the vague image of a “black bird”.
We will also take this opportunity to introduce other Crow family species. Recent research has pointed out that the Lidth’s Jay in Amami islands may be the ancestor of the Jay. Japan may be one of the original habitats of the Crow family, which spread from Oceania to Eurasia.

Organizer: The University Museum, The University of Tokyo (UMUT)