Christine Guth is a historian of Japanese art and design whose research interests include Japanese material culture of the early modern era, nineteenth- and twentieth-century graphic design, and the history of transnational collecting and display practices. She joined the Royal College Art in 2007 to lead the new specialism in Asian design history and material culture.
Dr Guth received her PhD in Art History from Harvard University and her undergraduate degree in Buddhist studies from the Catholic University of Louvain.
She has taught at universities including Princeton, Harvard, Berkeley and Stanford. As well as contributing to numerous exhibition catalogues, Christine Guth has co-curated exhibitions at the Japan Society, NY and Stanford University Art Museum.
Her book-length publications include Art, Tea and Industry: Masuda Takashi and the Mitsui Circle (1993), The Art of Edo Japan: the Artist and the City (1996), and Longfellow’s Tattoos: Tourism, Collecting and Japan (2004). Her writings on Buddhist art, cross-cultural dressing, and representations of Japan in visual and material culture have appeared in Monumenta Nipponica, The Art Journal, Positions and Res.
Christine Guth’s current research into the global currency of Hokusai’s Great Wave from the nineteenth century to the present day was the theme of the 2007 Toshiba lectures delivered at the British Museum, SOAS and UEA.