Andrew M. Watsky teaches courses in the history of Japanese art and specializes in his research in the Momoyama period (1568–1615). Mr. Watsky's publications examine such issues as how meaning is expressed in Japanese art, the role of the sacred in the Momoyama period, and the tea ritual. His book, Chikubushima: Deploying the Sacred Arts in Momoyama Japan, which won both the John Whitney Hall Book Prize and the Shimada Prize in 2006, examines warrior patronage of the sacred realm in the late sixteenth–early seventeenth century and, in turn, how numinous meaning was expressed in the diverse yet interconnected mediums then most highly valued. With the support of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 2007-2008, Mr. Watsky pursued research into the Japanese practice of bestowing personal names on non-representational objects. He has an interest, as well, in recent Japanese art, which stems from an earlier career at a contemporary art gallery in Tokyo.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS: “Locating ‘China’ in the Arts of Sixteenth-Century Japan,” chapter in Location, ed. Deborah Cherry and Fintan Cullen (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007); Chikubushima: Deploying the Sacred Arts in Momoyama Japan (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2004); “Commerce, Politics, and Tea: The Career of Imai Sōkyū,” chapter in Japanese Tea Culture: Art, History, and Practice, ed. Morgan Pitelka (London: Routledge, 2003).