[Special Feature: University Museums] Utilization of University Art Resources and the Potential of University Museums

2021/04/05

The background for conceiving of "art resources" in the sense of art as a resource for education and research at universities was the dire situation surrounding facilities for collection and exhibition within the art education and research organization at the University of Tsukuba, to which I belong. I would like to touch upon this first. While it goes without saying that every university, both in Japan and abroad, has its own unique environment, I would like to offer some personal views on the utilization of art resources in universities, particularly from the perspective of exhibition, using the response to this situation at the University of Tsukuba as a specific example.

In New York, the "NYARC New York Art Resources Consortium," based on web archives, has been active since 2006 as a collaboration between the libraries of the Museum of Modern Art, the Frick Collection, and the Brooklyn Museum. Its positioning is naturally different from "art resources" held by institutions that own artworks; NYARC's primary purpose is the sharing of research resources, and it also experiments with digital exhibitions utilizing those resources (see https://nyarc.org).

Now, among national comprehensive universities, the University of Tsukuba was for a long time the "only" university to possess an art education and research organization. However, for a long period, there was a major question mark as to whether there was a suitable place for the students studying there to exhibit their own works. As an organization, repeated budgetary requests were made on various occasions to improve this, but they were never realized. Other than the large and small classrooms normally used for lessons, there was only a small amount of exhibition space in the University Hall.

A particularly significant turning point in this situation occurred in 1990. The Tsukuba Museum of Art, Ibaraki opened nearby, with curators appointed to hold original special exhibitions and provide the venue to the general public. Thanks to this, a blessed environment, including its location, became available every year for the public display of graduation projects and Master's program completion projects. The museum eventually also became a venue for the publication of research results by students in the Doctoral Programs for practical arts.

On the other hand, in the late 1990s, there was an era when university museums were established at national universities. Although a university-wide review organization was set up at the University of Tsukuba with the aim of securing a budget, the addition of a new university museum was passed over, and the goal was not achieved. Nevertheless, exhibition facilities within the university steadily improved. This seems to have been largely due to the university becoming a corporation and the increasing demand for social and regional contributions.

In 2003, a multi-purpose hall was established in conjunction with the construction of the University Community Center to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the university's opening (131st anniversary of its founding). This open space, with high ceilings and the potential for spatial presentation using temporary walls, was unique within the university. In addition, the University Hall, which connects to the University Community Center, underwent a major renovation. The University of Tsukuba Gallery was established, featuring the Tomonaga Memorial Room and Shirakawa Memorial Room honoring Nobel laureates Dr. Shin-ichiro Tomonaga and Dr. Hideki Shirakawa, as well as physical education and sports displays introducing the outstanding athletes and Olympians produced throughout the long history dating back to the Gymnastics Training Center. Furthermore, a permanent art exhibition space appeared: the "University of Tsukuba Art Collection," which permanently displays part of the modern and contemporary painting and ceramics collection donated by Mr. Akira Ishii, who served as Chairman of the Library Resources Center (at the time) from 2005 to 2010. For this collection, a dedicated storage facility with air conditioning was set up in the building used by the art-related organizations. Additionally, the "Art Space" gallery, planned and operated by the same art-related organizations, was added to the University Hall.

Separately, new exhibition and storage facilities were also developed in the building used by the art faculty organization and Doctoral Programs students (Art and Design Building) in conjunction with seismic retrofitting. As a result, a series of small and medium-sized exhibition spaces appeared along the loop road surrounding the University of Tsukuba campus, stretching from the University Community Center and University Hall through the art education and research organization buildings to General Research Building D.

Conventional exhibitions were centered on the pedestrian deck that runs north-south through the campus, intended to convey exhibition content to the eyes of pedestrians on that axis. Now, however, that has been replaced by a perspective along the loop road—that is, a perspective directed toward the outside of the university. From the end of 2011, a movement began to collectively refer to this series of exhibition spaces as "Art Street."

"Art Street" simply presents the vitality of diverse activities in the art education and research organization, from Western painting, Japanese painting, and sculpture to design, and consists of exhibition spaces with different characters. At the University Community Center, exhibitions in collaboration with the Tsukuba Museum of Art, Ibaraki (such as the Ay-O exhibition), design exhibitions by Mitsuo Katsui (who had deep ties to the art organization), exchange projects with international exchange agreement partner schools, and the publication of class results are held. Meanwhile, at "Art Space," diverse projects are carried out, including themed exhibitions related to the Ishii Collection, special exhibitions of art materials owned by the art department, and presentations of faculty research results. Similarly, the Art Gallery in the Art and Design Building hosts planned exhibitions of art materials managed by the art department, faculty research presentations, and exhibitions of award-winning works (purchased works) by undergraduate and graduate students. In Building 6A, adjacent to this research building, an exhibition space independently operated by students was established in 2001; currently, student works are exhibited almost every week at this Art Gallery T+ (T-plus).

Even before the establishment of this "Art Street," the issue had surfaced of how the art education and research organization should actively disseminate diverse exhibition projects based on artistic production and related research results both inside and outside the university. An attempt to resolve this as part of research activities was the two-year research project starting in 2008, "Construction of A.R.T.—Strategic Display and Utilization of Art Resources at the University of Tsukuba" (represented by Omuka). This project was adopted as a "Pre-Strategic Initiative" by the "University of Tsukuba Organization for the Promotion of Research Strategic Initiatives" established by the university. A.R.T. stands for Art Resources in Tsukuba, and the intent was to explore ways to turn art into an education and research resource. Furthermore, the important point was not to stop at merely preserving and managing it as an education and research resource, but to explore its utilization by attempting its "strategic display."

At the time, the art education organization was a small one, consisting of an undergraduate program with a capacity of 100 students per year, Doctoral Programs in Art (capacity of 60 for the first half and 10 for the second half), and a faculty organization of just under 60 people. In the university-wide scheme, it tended to be buried. Therefore, to increase the power of dissemination to the outside, we launched "Tsukuba Art A.R.T." as a banner on the top page of the university website. The physical education department, which is among the top class in Japan, had already preceded us by disseminating various information through "Tsukuba Sports on the WEB." "Tsukuba Art" followed this lead, collectively posting art-related information within the art organization (information on the publication of education and research results, projects in exhibition spaces, information on collection materials, etc.). This banner can still be seen on the university website today.

In this way, research activities on "art resources" began together with Associate Professor Rintaro Terakado, who also worked energetically on the preservation, management, research, and utilization of the Ishii Collection inside and outside the university. Subsequently, this progressed to a stage of collaboration with practical activity groups and facilities at other distinctive universities such as Kyushu University, Nagoya University, and Keio University. Finally, we obtained a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (A) for "Comprehensive Research on the Utilization of 'Art Resources' in Universities" (FY2015–2017) and aimed for multi-faceted development. Although circumstances differed—such as groups of universities without a museum-like museum, groups of universities without an art education organization, and groups of universities that have a museum but seek more active engagement—we conducted surveys and research on measures for utilizing "art resources" while also seeking international cooperation.

Joint research with research groups from other universities proceeded in two stages. The first stage was the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) "Basic Research on the Utilization of 'Art Resources' in Universities" (FY2011–2013). This was a collaboration between the AQA Project (Project for Asian Art of Q-Dai Kyushu University), which was launched in 2006 centered on Professor Masahiro Ushiroshoji (at the time) of Kyushu University, and the Nagoya University Institute of Liberal Arts and Sciences Project Gallery "clas (cell for liberal arts & sciences)," which was operated centered on Associate Professor Kiyofumi Motoyama (at the time) of Nagoya University.

Professor Ushiroshoji retired from the university last year and is currently focusing on contemporary Asian art research based at Tokage Bunko, but the diverse project activities of AQA and the subsequent Post-AQA up until last year can be confirmed on the website (AQA PROJECT WEBSITE).

Unlike "clas," the AQA Project was an activity without a fixed exhibition space, but due to the nature of exhibiting contemporary art, it actively sought space outside the university. For example, these included the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, the Fukuoka Prefectural Museum of Art, and the Gallery Artier in Hakata Riverain.

On the other hand, "clas" was established in 2007. It aims to be used as a "space for exhibitions, presentations, seminars, meetings, etc., related to education, research, and social activities at Nagoya University, to foster multi-perspective thinking and comprehensive knowledge through visual means at the university, and to contribute to the improvement of regional culture at large." It continues to be maintained today with the goal of social contribution. In addition to the publication of annual reports, its track record of including projects not only in art but also in information science can be confirmed on the website (http://www.ilas.nagoya-u.ac.jp/clas/).

As the second stage based on the joint research of the three university groups, we began the aforementioned "Comprehensive Research." Here, it became a large group with six teams, including the three previous projects. Associate Professor Misako Mishima of the Kyushu University Museum joined the Kyushu University team; Professor Setsuya Hashizume of the Museum of Osaka University joined the Osaka University team; Professor Yoko Watanabe of the Keio University Art Center (KUAC) joined the Keio University team; and Associate Professor Koto Sato of the Yamagata University Museum joined as a new member of the Yamagata University team.

Unlike the basic research, the comprehensive research took the form of extending its wings to university museums that are truly like university museums. Looking at the research project as a whole, it revealed the diverse exhibition environments for "art resources" in Japanese universities. At the same time, each team deepened its understanding through research exchanges on how to utilize "art resources," referring to overseas cases by conducting overseas surveys and holding international symposia.

Through these case studies, what became particularly clear through Professor Mishima's emphasis was the significance of the space itself as an "art resource." An example is the No. 1 Annex Warehouse (formerly the Faculty of Engineering Intelligent Machinery Practice Factory) developed by the Kyushu University Museum in 2005 at Kyushu University, where the relocation from the Hakozaki Campus to the Ito Campus was underway. The exhibition of contemporary Korean and Japanese art "Otonari-san" (2010–2011) by the AQA Project became eloquent evidence of the possibility of effectively producing a resonance between exhibits and space while utilizing those historical facilities and equipment (see Otonari-san: Korea-Japan Contemporary Art Exhibition by Kyudai Student AQA Project).

Spaces on university campuses are not dead spaces from the perspective of "art resources." It can be said that utilizing them directly leads to utilizing them as visual cultural resources.

I have described the background related to "art resource" research in some detail, but the activities during this period have been centered on display/exhibition, and in fact, the perspective of examining "art" or "art resources" themselves has not been foregrounded. For example, in the case of formats like performance or installation, there is no need to be fixated on the fixed apparatus of an exhibition room. At the University of Tsukuba, there was a "Comprehensive Art" field led by Katsuhiro Yamaguchi, Shunsuke Mitamura, Morio Shinoda, Tatsuo Kawaguchi, and others. From the 1970s, mainly during university festivals, student-led performances titled "Space Theater" were held in front of the University Hall as a "series of spatial alienation works." This was further passed down to projects titled "Performance" in a photo studio from 1983 (for details, see the catalog "University of Tsukuba Exhibition," Museum of Modern Art, Ibaraki, 2016).

Even so, are guidelines for universities to engage with "art" beyond the preservation and management of their collections completely unnecessary? At the same time, there was the question of whether it would be enough to simply propose a policy limited to "art," and it was difficult to deepen the discussion.

What made me think about this was the "Cultural Policy Statement" issued by the University of Melbourne in Australia in 2008. This was formulated for the university to fulfill its contribution through the utilization of cultural resources and cultural programs held for society. While the content itself might not be particularly noteworthy, isn't the important thing that the university clearly stated its social mission regarding the arts?

In that regard, at Keio University, the "Internal Regulations Concerning the Management and Operation of Artworks (Cultural Assets) Owned by Keio University" have already been in effect since 2002. These were established with the aim of "properly managing and operating artworks and art materials (hereinafter referred to as 'artworks') owned or managed by the Juku as part of the education and research activities of Keio University, to improve the campus environment, cultivate the cultural sensitivity of students, and facilitate social exchange with the outside world through artworks." The establishment of the Art Management and Operation Committee should be evaluated as a pioneering initiative.

In this way, in promoting the utilization of "art resources," universities are basically required to make their stance as universities clear. On the other hand, one cannot overlook the background that the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) in Australia, which originated as a school affiliated with a national art museum, was gradually integrated with other art departments and, while possessing theaters and concert halls, was incorporated into the comprehensive University of Melbourne as a single department (Faculty of VCA and MCM) in 2006.

It is almost too obvious, but the utilization of education and research resources that take into view not only "art" but "culture" at large is also considered an important task assigned to universities.