The Form of Days Gone By Constructed by Ephemera: The Minami Gallery Archive

2024/03/12

Keio Museum Commons (KeMCo) will hold the exhibition "Ephemera: Printed Matter and Expression" starting March 18 (until May 10). The exhibition will introduce printed ephemera (flyers, posters, invitation postcards, etc.) from post-war art, where various forms of art developed, sourced from cultural institutions both inside and outside the university, such as archives and libraries.

One of these is the ephemera related to "Minami Gallery" in the collection of the Keio University Art Center (KUAC). Established in 1956 by Kusuo Shimizu, Minami Gallery was one of the leading galleries of the art scene at the time, discovering young domestic artists while also introducing foreign artists at an early stage after the war. Approximately 200 exhibitions were held until its closure, and for almost all of them, distributed printed materials such as invitation postcards, leaflets, and catalogs were produced. While the designs were tailored to each artist and work, they demonstrated a unified style for the gallery by standardizing formats and logotypes, showing that the gallery was conscious of exhibition-related printed matter from an early stage.

The Keio University Art Center (KUAC), where the collection is housed, is known domestically and internationally as a major archive of Japanese post-war art and manages materials related to Tatsumi Hijikata and Shuzo Takiguchi. Seeing a different cohesion by cross-referencing items from individual collections linked to individuals or groups is a unique feature of an archive where multiple bodies of materials coexist, but materials from domestic and international galleries like Minami Gallery are also bodies of materials constructed daily through such accumulation. Marking its 30th anniversary since its establishment, the Keio University Art Center (KUAC) will hold the exhibition "Published by KUAC—30 Years of the Keio University Art Center (KUAC) Traced Through Publications" starting March 4. Looking back at the trajectory of the institution through its publications is an opportunity to encounter printed matter produced by a cultural institution active in the present moment. We hope you will enjoy it along with KeMCo's "Ephemera" exhibition.

In this day and age where we obtain various information digitally, when we reconsider the amount of information carried by printed matter on paper, the volume is immense, capturing even the senses of touch and smell. We hope that through the charm of the printed matter of the past and the experimental expressions developed therein, visitors will also turn their attention to the printed ephemera in their own surroundings.

(Shiho Hasegawa, Staff Member, Keio Museum Commons)