Museum Research Trip Japan Week 1

Hi everyone, I am doing a research trip in preparation for my senior year schoolwork in Japan, and here is my reflection for the first week of my trip. For this week, I visited Yamatane Museum of Art, Idemitsu Museum of Art, Tokyo Art University Museum, and the Tokyo National Museum. Each of the museum has a different focus on their exhibitions, and I was able to study works from ~1000CE to contemporary times. On this blog site, rather than talking about art historical observations of the individual works, I want to share my thoughts on the curation and administration aspects of the Japanese museums.

Museums, at least for the four I visited in Tokyo, are very inclusive spaces for different age groups. There are often special events designed for kids, but I also see a lot of senior citizens lining up early in the morning before the gate opens. Compared to what I often witness in American museums, the labels for works in these Tokyo museums are very “leading”. For example, you would never see a label at the Clark telling you what the work IS about and what to pay attention to; however in the exhibitions I have been to there were often labels saying “The xxx stroke here is exceptional… This work is the most famous of [artist name]” etc. Japanese museums also, for every one of them, has clear arrowhead signs indicating the designated direction for audience procession. This on the one hand makes the space more ordered and less crowded, yet I also find it hard to look back on a certain work freely.

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