THE ART OF JAPANESE GARDEN: FROM TRADITION TO MODERNITY

This lecture introduces some of Japan’s most famous gardens and provides

a context for understanding the principles of Japanese garden design as it

has evolved through the ages. The Japanese love of nature and the

changing seasons has manifested itself in paintings and in the intimate and

grand-scale gardens surrounding aristocratic palaces and Buddhist

temples, as well as Zen-inspired dry landscape gardens with strikingly

symbolic content. The lecture also draws upon wider examples to illustrate

the distinctive qualities that the Japanese have brought to garden design,

an approach successfully adapted to modern domestic settings and to

Japanese gardens abroad.

Professor Conte-Helm is a long-established Lecturer of The Arts Society with a

BA in History of Art and an MA in Asian Art. She has most recently served as

Executive Director of the UK-Japan 21st Century Group, as Visiting Professor at

Northumbria University, and as a Member of the Board of Governors of the

University for the Creative Arts. She is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

She was Director General of the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation from

1999-2011 and has held senior academic positions at various UK universities.

She is widely published and has lectured throughout the UK and abroad. She is

also an experienced cruise speaker and a Resident Historian with Viking

Cruises, lecturing on many aspects of Asian Art and East-West Encounters. She

was awarded an OBE in the 2011 Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to UK-

Japan educational and cultural relations, and the Order of the Rising Sun,

Gold Rays with Rosette by the Government of Japan in 2019.