‘In Praise of Hands’: A New Exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum

An exhibition of a collaboration between Naoko Matsubara, a distinguished Canadian woodblock artist, and the Department of English and Related Literature’s Royal Literary Fund Fellow, Penny Boxall, has opened at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Naoko Matsubara has been creating dynamic woodcuts for over fifty years, and her work is in the collections of many museums around the world. Her woodcuts are published alongside Penny's poem-responses from the exhibition in a book, In Praise of Hands (Ashmolean Museum, 2020). The exhibition opened on 1st October, and runs till 13th March. Entry is free. 

No matter which side of the divide
you find yourself on, come closer.
There is more of me in you than I thought
and, I’ll venture, vice versa.