Image: Brooklyn Museum, New York
The Brooklyn Museum will open ‘Art of Manga’ on October 3, 2026, bringing more than 600 original manga drawings to New York in the exhibition’s East Coast debut. Scheduled to run through January 31, 2027, the presentation is described by the museum as the first major exhibition in the Americas to explore manga—Japanese comics and graphic novels—as an art form.
Its scale is matched by the range of series named in the announcement. Visitors will encounter original manga artworks from ‘Inuyasha’, ‘JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure’, ‘Ōoku: The Inner Chambers’ and ‘ONE PIECE’, among others. The Brooklyn Museum describes the more than 600 drawings as showcasing manga’s immersive power and social impact.
The exhibition arrives with a curatorial structure spanning multiple institutions. ‘Art of Manga’ is organized by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and curated at both venues by Nicole Coolidge Rousmaniere, Deputy Director General of the MOA Museum of Art, Mokichi Okada Art and Culture Foundation. At the Brooklyn Museum, the presentation is organized by Joan Cummins, Curatorial Chair and Lisa and Bernard Selz Senior Curator of Asian Art, and Pauline Vermare, Phillip and Edith Leonian Curator of Photography, with Yara Doumani, Curatorial Assistant for Arts of Africa, Asia, and the Islamic World.
Opening concurrently on October 3, ‘Manga Before Manga: Japanese Art from the Collection’ offers historical context for the larger exhibition. The Spotlight installation traces Japanese traditions and techniques that shaped contemporary manga through 21 works from the Brooklyn Museum collection. Spanning more than 900 years, the selection examines how Japanese artists have used line and form to convey emotion, power, sound and motion.
