Pratt Institute

Education

Ph.D., The City University of New York, Graduate Center

Biography

Professor Yamamura specializes in feminism, critical theory, and post-World War II transnational art history. Her dissertation is a pioneering study of the Japanese female artist Yayoi Kusama through a comparative examination of postwar artistic developments in Japan, the United States, and Europe. Among various distinctions, she has been the recipient of Predoctoral Fellowships from the Smithsonian American Museum Terra Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the Center for Place Culture and Politics at CUNY, and a research travel grant from the Ford Foundation. She was a curator of the international section of Tokyo Municipal Government’s Faret Tachikawa Project (1994) and Grapefruit: Yoko Ono in 1964 (2004). She is currently working on an exhibition that focuses on war and migration centering on ethnic Asian and Middle Eastern artists working in the United States (2013). Professor Yamamura is a contributor to the 2011 Tate Modern catalogue, Yayoi Kusama and the main author of the Boijman’s Museum catalogue Yayoi Kusama: Mirrored Years (2009). Her article will appear in Woman’s Art Journal (fall/winter 2012). Professor Yamamura has given lectures at Frick Collection, Smithsonian American Art Museum, UCLA Hammer Museum, Nam June Pike Art Center, and Whitney Museum of American Art. Since 2004, she has been a lecturer at the Museum of Modern Art.