Graham, Patricia J.
Patricia Graham received an M.A. in Asian art history and a Ph.D. in Japanese art history from the University of Kansas. After working as an Asian art curator in art museums and as a professor of Asian art and culture at several universities, she started her own business as an Asian art appraiser in 1993 and is currently one of the few Certified Appraisers of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean arts in the U.S. She continues to be affiliated with KU as an adjunct research associate at the Center for East Asian Studies.
Selected Publications
Her academic achievements include various fellowships, including those from the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership, the Asian Cultural Council, the Fulbright Program, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Her long list of publications includes essays in museum catalogues, encyclopedias, multi-authored scholarly books, scholarly journals, and three books: Tea of the Sages, the Art of Sencha (1998), Faith and Power in Japanese Buddhist Art: 1600-2005 (2007), and Japanese Design: Art, Aesthetics, & Culture (2014), the latter was designated a Choice Magazine outstanding academic title in 2015. Her current research projects include a study of U.S.-Japan cultural diplomacy and U.S. collectors’ taste in Japanese art in the first half of the twentieth century through the lens of Langdon Warner (1881-1955), one of the most influential Asian art historians of the twentieth century and one of World War II’s “Monuments Men” who significantly helped shape and sustain the American public’s understanding of East Asia and especially of Japan, from the 1920s through the early post World War II period. Another project explores the iconoclastic art of contemporary Japanese artists inspired by Buddhism, tentatively titled "Buddhist Inspired Art in Contemporary Japan: Intersections of Tradition, Imagination, and Social Activism."
