Kabuki actors were superstars in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Japan. They were
admired by passionate fans with an insatiable appetite for images of them, fed by a
publishing industry that mass-produced colorful woodblock prints of actors on stage which
could act as substitutes for a theater experience. Join a tour with UMMA docents of
Japanese Prints of Kabuki Theater from the Collection of the University of Michigan
Museum of Art and discover these dramatic prints by major artists that include off- or
backstage portrayals, fantasy scenes of actors in unlikely groupings, and even death
portraits of especially famous actors.