Since its opening in 2005, Onishi Gallery has featured contemporary Japanese artists who work in a range of media, including ceramics, glass, metalwork, and calligraphy. These artists are united in their common embrace of tradition in the creative process, and they are distinct in their exquisite and diverse modes of expression. Onishi Gallery merges the past with the present through the presentation of historically rich explorations of traditional art forms and ambitious experimentations in new formats.
Many Onishi Gallery artists are represented today in the permanent collections of major museums, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the British Museum, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Worcester Museum of Art. Several of Onishi Gallery’s artists have also been designated “Living National Treasures” by the government of Japan, and play an important role in passing on their historic creative legacies to younger generations in Japan and to those abroad. Since 2013, the Gallery has become affiliated with Tobi, a newly established ceramic organization based in Japan with 150 members and led by six Living National Treasures. This new partnership has opened doors for the Gallery’s representation of and presentation to an expanded transnational art community.
Committed to the promotion of international artistic and cultural exchange, the Gallery also works closely with New York-based organizations such as Japan Society, Asia Week New York, the Japanese Art Dealers Association (JADA), and the Japanese Art Society of America (JASA).
Nana Onishi, the Gallery’s founder and owner, graduated from Kanazawa College of Art, one of Japan’s most prestigious art colleges, and earned a Master of Fine Arts degree at the Pratt Institute in New York City. She worked as a curator in Japan, Italy, and New York before opening her own gallery, where Onishi has developed a unique focus that caters to art collectors and Museums. In 2009, Newsweek Japan declared her one of the “Top 100 Japanese that the World Respects.”
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