Yoshitaka Amano (b. 1952, Shizuoka, Japan) creates worlds. He has done so since he was fifteen, when he moved to Tokyo and began working as a character designer for an anime studio, where drawing was always an act of translation — converting narrative into illustrated concepts that would become the connective tissue of a fictional universe. Throughout his career as an independent artist and as a character designer for franchises such as Final Fantasy and Vampire Hunter D, drawing has been a way of describing the porousness between the real and the fantastic.
Origins 始源 takes up Amano's interest in primordial beginnings. Absorbed in recent years by Greek and Shinto mythology, he presents Pandora, a series of drawings of the Greek myth of the first mortal woman that circle the gallery like an ancient frieze or the storyboards for an animation. Alongside these works, a selection of illustrations, animation and popular materials from the 1980s and '90s — including the anime film Angel's Egg and sensual depictions of The Tale of Genji — is presented in the Academy's library. This is Amano's first institutional solo show in New York.
Curated by Noa Wesley, Assistant Curator, with special thanks to GKIDS. An essay by Sean Thor Conroe, Shining Genji, accompanies the exhibition as part of the Arts and Letters Reader series. Note: the exhibition is closed Thursday, October 22 – Sunday, October 25, 2026 for a Salon Concert in the library.
American Academy of Arts and Letters