Curator, Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Masami Yamada has been curator of Japanese art in the Asia Department at the Victoria and Albert Museum since 2018, where she is responsible for the collections of contemporary craft, woodblock prints, netsuke and lacquerware. Having grown up in Japan and studied Western art during her undergraduate exchange year in London before working in the Japanese art department at Bonhams in London, Yamada is an expert in the global understanding of Japanese art. She contributed extensively to the fashion exhibition ‘Kimono: Kyoto to Catwalk’ (2020) at the V&A, which explored the history of the kimono through prints, paintings, objets d’art and the garments themselves. More recently, she co-curated ‘Japan: Myths to Manga’ at Young V&A (2023–24). Her research focuses on the innovative use of centuries-old craft techniques in Japan, especially the production and use of urushi (lacquer). In 2022, she received the Art Fund’s Sir Nicholas Goodison Award for Contemporary Craft to develop the museum’s collection of 21st-century Japanese lacquer.