Celebrating Sano Gofu:
50th Anniversary of Sho-fu-an
(Wind in the Pines Tea Hut)

Through August 31, 2025
Reception: May 11, 2025, 1:00 – 4:00 pm

This exhibit displays the paintings, sketches, and architectural plans created by Japanese artist and designer, Sano Gofu. Gofu also designed the museum’s tea hut, Wind in the Pines (Shofuan).

Gofu created numerous watercolors of botanicals and locations in Japan, as well as painted fans, scrolls, and screens. A student of the famous nihonga painter SeihōTakeuchi, Gofu graduated from the Kyoto Municipal Arts and Crafts College. He became a sumi-e painter: a Zen painting technique that focuses on nature using ink washes, ink brush and watercolor paint.

Through the years, many of these works were given to the Weyerhaeusers and the Art Complex Museum’s collection now contains more than 70 objects by Gofu.

The exhibit includes about half of the paintings by Sano Gofu in the collection, as well as photographs and drawings of the tea hut, which demonstrate his design process. A painted screen that Gofu created is on view in the Founders Room.

Museum co-founders Carl and Edith Weyerhaeuser became friends with many of the consultants who guided them in amassing over 8,000 objects that make up the Art Complex Museum collection. Kojiro Tomita, Curator of Asian Arts for the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, was among the first advisors the Weyerhaeusers got to know. Tomita helped to guide their selections of Asian arts and ceramics.