Date: 21 October 2025

New exhibition showcasing incredible Japanese woodblock prints due to open at York Art Gallery in February 2026.

York Art Gallery is delighted to announce its next major exhibition, Making Waves: The Art of Japanese Woodblock Print, opening on 27 February 2026. The exhibition features Japanese woodblock prints from York Art Gallery’s extensive collection as well as iconic works such as Katsushika Hokusai’s The Great Wave, generously on loan to York Art Gallery from Maidstone Museum. Making Waves explores the development of Japanese woodblock printing, revealing its origins and techniques alongside the influence of nature, society and cultural change on this art form.

The exhibition features works dating from the 17th to 21st centuries, with a special focus on the heyday of Japanese woodblock printing in the 18th and 19th centuries, when artists such as Kitagawa Utamaro, Katsushika Hokusai and Utagawa Hiroshige produced vibrant and technically advanced images showcasing Japanese culture. These bold and evocative works often reflected events and fluctuations in Japanese society with dynamic designs that have remained popular centuries later and captured the imaginations of generations worldwide.

The exhibition also extends into the York Museum Gardens, as an exciting new Japanese-style garden will start to take shape over the coming months. With a range of different works, objects, exciting loans and interactive opportunities, Making Waves is an exhibition not to be missed. A lively programme of events, designed to promote creativity and wellbeing, will accompany the exhibition.

Making Waves: The Art of Japanese Woodblock Print, will run from 27 February 2026 to 30 August 2026 and will be included in general admission to York Art Gallery.

Further details and a full programme of events will be announced in due course.

Title images left to right:

YORAG : 2002.34   Chobunsai Eishi,  Kasen of the Ogiya, from Six Select Beauties of the Gay Quarters, from a series of the twelve months, 1790s. Image Courtesy of York Museums Trust.

Katsushika Hokusai, The Great Wave. c.1829-32. Image Courtesy of Maidstone Museum.

YORAG : R4421  Utagawa Hiroshige, Asakusa Rice-fields and Torinomachi Festival, from the series ‘One Hundred Famous Views of Edo’, part 4: Winter, 1857. Image Courtesy of York Museums Trust.