Ava Bush

Japanese Art and Architecture
Ava Bush Headshot

Ava Bush studies the transregional origins of the pictorial and spatial traditions undergirding early Japanese Esoteric Buddhist art and architecture. Drawing on ethnobiological inquiry, Ava investigates themes of embodiment, alchemy, gestation, and gender in Esoteric subjects such as the Taizōkai and Kongōkai mandalas and the Daitō (Esoteric tower). As a secondary interest, Ava also studies contemporary Ainu art, exploring concepts such as indigeneity and the indigenous body. 

Ava received her A.M. in Regional Studies–East Asia (RSEA) from Harvard University in 2025 and her B.A. in Asian Studies, Art History, and Anthropology from Tulane University in 2023. Her curatorial works include the exhibition Monochromes: Japanese Zen Painting and Ceramics at the New Orleans Museum of Art, and the digital exhibition People’s Clay Art at the American Institute of India Studies in Gurugram. Ava previously served as a curatorial and research assistant to the Manyō’an (Gitter-Yelen) collection of Japanese art and the Newcomb Art Museum.