Art of Manga exhibition opens at Brooklyn Museum

The Brooklyn Museum’s Art of Manga exhibition is now open, bringing more than 600 original drawings and prints to New York for an East Coast showcase running until 31 January 2027. The exhibition opened on 3 October and explores manga as both a storytelling medium and a visual art form.

What the exhibition includes

The show features work by eight major artists, including Hirohiko Araki, Eiichiro Oda, Rumiko Takahashi, Jiro Taniguchi, Gengoroh Tagame, Mari Yamazaki, Kazumi Yamashita and Fumi Yoshinaga. The Brooklyn Museum says visitors can also see art connected to JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, ONE PIECE, Inuyasha, Ōoku: The Inner Chambers and other major manga series. The presentation is organised by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and curated at both venues by Nicole Coolidge Rousmaniere. Brooklyn Museum curators Joan Cummins and Pauline Vermare oversee the New York presentation, installed in the museum’s first-floor Great Hall.

A different East Coast presentation

Anime News Network’s early tour found that much of the collection follows the San Francisco version, but the Brooklyn installation has its own character. Cummins said the museum had to fit 658 works into a historic room with large columns and two different heights. She also joked that publishers advised the curators not to place rival artists next to one another. The Brooklyn presentation adds a display of Taniguchi’s Hundred Year Lineage, while a separate area called Manga Before Manga connects the medium to older Japanese art, including ukiyo-e prints and emaki scrolls. Timed tickets are required, and the exhibition is on view from 3 October 2026 through 31 January 2027.

Our opinion

An exhibition that treats manga as art rather than as a footnote to anime is long overdue. The combination of original drawings, publishing history and the artists’ individual techniques gives curious newcomers a way in without flattening the medium for existing fans. The Brooklyn installation also earns its own identity instead of feeling like a touring exhibition simply parked in a new city.