Creating a New Museum: Keio Museum Commons Vol. 7—An Associative Network Spun from the Creation of New Landscapes: Museum Commons

2021/04/08

One characteristic of university museums is that their holdings are not necessarily collected consciously according to a pre-determined collection policy. Rather, they are often a miscellaneous accumulation gathered for various reasons—such as purchases as research materials or donations by alumni—during the course of the university's research and educational activities. I recognized this once again last year when the Keio Museum Commons (KeMCo) edited the "Selections from the Cultural Properties of Keio University." This volume is the first visual collection book to select 100 items from the university's cultural properties—including National Treasures, Important Cultural Properties, paintings, sculptures, books, archaeological materials, and architecture—and explain them alongside newly taken photographs. Its publication allowed us to overlook the entirety of the university's cultural properties for the first time, revealing a diversity and neutrality as a comprehensive university behind this truly colorful collection. In other words, a university is a place that stores the National Treasure "Jar with Autumn Grass Design" and the "Gutenberg Bible" (the West's first movable-type printed book) alongside the rabbit collection painstakingly gathered by Izumi Kyoka. It archives not only the baby carriage brought back by Fukuzawa Yukichi as a souvenir from America, but also the Paris cafe coasters used by Shuzo Takiguchi as memo pads, finding cultural-historical value in all of them without hierarchy.

Of course, there are many university museums, such as the Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum at Waseda University, that actively enhance their collections within a specific field. However, in the case of Keio University, the collection is strongly colored by diversity and heterogeneity, reflecting a history of purchases and donations spanning over a century and a half.

Such heterogeneity is a common feature of historic university museums. It is generally accepted that the world's oldest museum is the Ashmolean Museum at the University of Oxford, which opened in 1683; if so, the Ashmolean is also the world's first university museum. Its collection began with the "Cabinet of Curiosities" gathered by the 17th-century antiquarian John Tradescant. The Tradescant collection, still displayed on the museum's first basement floor, is a miscellaneous gathering of exotic antiques and curiosities from the East and West. Reflecting these origins, the current Ashmolean is full of diversity: while it displays world-renowned masterpieces like the "Alfred Jewel" (a gold ornament depicting Christ in crystal and enamel from the 9th-century reign of Alfred the Great) and "The Hunt in the Forest" by the Italian Renaissance painter Paolo Uccello, it also features forgeries of ancient Roman sculptures purchased by British aristocrats on the Grand Tour to Rome in the 18th century at the gallery entrance.

The University of Oxford also possesses the Museum of Natural History, the Pitt Rivers Museum of archaeology and anthropology, and the Bodleian Library, having been entrusted with the care of curiosities from around the world. This demonstrates that such multicultural collecting has always been closely linked to the university's research and educational activities. Similar to the University of Oxford, Keio University can be described as a single "distributed museum," where diverse cultural properties accumulated throughout the university's history are stored and displayed across multiple departments, including affiliated schools.

Naturally, the act of collecting involves the movement of objects. While the mobility of cultural properties varies by genre, it is common—and even expected—for books, crafts, and ornaments to move through donation or purchase. On the other hand, in the case of Western paintings until the early modern period, many were not intended to be moved, such as murals for churches and public buildings or paintings commissioned as furnishings for specific rooms. Furthermore, when it comes to structures ranging from monuments to churches, movement is not envisioned; rather, they are often designed from the start as part of a landscape.

However, looking at the current state of cultural properties, it is clear that movement has been repeated throughout history regardless of genre. Inside a building adjacent to the Archbasilica of Saint John Lateran in Rome, there is a marble staircase called the Scala Sancta, which is said to have originally been in Pontius Pilate's palace in Jerusalem and climbed by Jesus for his trial. Similarly, in Loreto, Italy, there is a house said to have been inhabited by the Virgin Mary in Nazareth, which was allegedly carried across the sea by angels in the 13th century. Regardless of the truth of these legends, there are many examples of church murals and stained glass now housed in museums due to the demolition or damage of buildings. There are also cases like The Cloisters (the medieval art branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York), where a medieval monastery in France was actually dismantled and relocated. Once an object is recognized as a cultural property, movement might be considered its destiny. The Century Akao Collection, which forms the core of KeMCo, and the art collection of Keio University as a whole, have gathered as a result of such movements. KeMCo is a "vacant lot" that provides an artificial space for accumulated cultural properties and helps them acquire new contexts.

However, KeMCo does not intend to further centralize cultural properties that are already stored in various parts of Keio University or casually displayed at the Kojunsha (Mita) or the Jukukan-kyoku (Keio Corporate Administration), except in cases where evacuation is necessary due to noticeable damage. As highlighted in a section of the "Selections from the Cultural Properties," there are many historical buildings in Mita, Hiyoshi, and Shinanomachi. The Mita Campus, in particular, is lined with atmospheric buildings designed by Sone Chujo Architectural Office and Fumihiko Maki, including the Enzetsukan (Public Speaking Hall) and the Old University Library, which are Important Cultural Properties. Fortunately, due to its compact size for a main campus of a comprehensive university, the entire campus is already a museum. KeMCo is located along Sakurada-dori just outside the campus, facing historical buildings like the Old University Library and the Jukukan-kyoku across the garden. This position symbolically represents the connection of the museum space of the Mita hill to the world outside the university. KeMCo is an organization whose philosophy is to function as a hub for the "distributed museum," focusing on the diversity of cultural properties and connecting them widely through the associative power unique to a university.

As the title "Cross-Scape" suggests, the inaugural exhibition aims to create new landscapes through the intersection of cultural properties and the intersection of people through those properties. The exhibition consists of two interlocking projects: "Script-Scape: Writing and Form in Masterpieces from the Century Akao Collection" and "Gathered-Scape: Landscapes of Gathering from the Cultural Properties of Keio University." These celebrate the beginning of the exchange between the Century Akao Collection and cultural properties related to Keio University, which have gathered in the new "vacant lot" of KeMCo upon its opening. Furthermore, in response to the "Script-Scape" exhibition focusing on the forms of Japanese characters, the "(Western) Script-Scape: Typefaces and Movable Type in Western Rare Books from the Keio University Library" exhibition will be held at the Library Exhibition Room, another part of the distributed museum. Characters are not mere symbols. Closely observing typefaces and handwriting that have changed according to the era and purpose as a single image expands interest to writing instruments like brushes and quills. This further connects to the work "FFIGURATI #314," newly created by Keio University alumnus and artist Enrico Isamu Oyama for the KeMCo StudI/O on the 8th floor of the East Annex. This artwork can be interpreted as "characters" written by Oyama using aerosol paint without directly touching the support material (in this case, curtains and pillars). Additionally, in May, an international symposium titled "Book-Scape: Associative Landscapes Created by Book Culture" will be held, focusing on the cultural landscape seen by regarding books as art. The associations surrounding characters will likely accelerate further.

The experience of seeing the exhibits up close and feeling their texture as objects expands virtually from the East Annex to the outside of Mita Campus. Through the "Keio Object Hub" (KOH)—a cross-search service for university-held cultural properties provided by KeMCo—the web of associations spreads to cultural properties in other "distributed museums" and even to objects worldwide. KeMCo's mission is to provide a matrix for opening up new landscapes one after another: physically tracing the miscellaneous and diverse cultural properties unique to a university, giving them academic meaning, disseminating them as dynamic content utilizing the digital web of associations, and repeatedly updating them while receiving feedback from around the world.

We look forward to your physical and digital visits to Keio University's first museum, and the world's first Museum Commons, as it finally opens its doors.

(This series ends with this issue.)