Sinéad Vilbar

Dr. Sinéad Vilbar is curator of Japanese art at the Cleveland Museum of Art. She holds a PhD from Princeton University and a BA from Yale University. She was a Japan Foundation predoctoral fellow at Tōhoku University in Sendai, Japan. Her recent exhibitions with publications include Shinto: Discovery of the Divine in Japanese Art (2019), an international loan exhibition organized with the special cooperation of the Nara National Museum, and Reeds and Geese: Japanese Art from the Collection of George Gund III (2017), which celebrated the bequest to the CMA of Japanese medieval ink paintings and ceramics from George Gund III (1937–2013) and featured the painting Reeds and Geese, bearing an inscription by Chinese émigré monk Yishan Yining (1247–1317). Vilbar was also coordinating curator for Remaking Tradition: Modern Art of Japan from the Tokyo National Museum (2014). Over the summer, she opened Colors of Kyoto (2023), an exhibition highlighting porcelains gifted from the collection of James and Christine Heusinger. Current projects include research on the painter Watanabe Shiko.

Contact the Curator at: JapaneseArt@clevelandart.org