[Feature: University Museums] Roundtable Discussion: University Museums Challenging New Possibilities

This April, Keio Museum Commons (abbreviated as KeMCo) will open to the public as the first museum of Keio University. On this occasion, I would like to hear your thoughts on the role of university museums and, more broadly, how universities should engage with cultural properties.

At Keio, museum concepts have been considered several times in the past, but they never came to fruition due to various circumstances. However, this time, it has been realized thanks to a donation from the Century Cultural Foundation.

In fact, Keio already houses various cultural properties across multiple campuses, and some of them are casually displayed in various locations. Therefore, when creating the museum, rather than gathering these cultural properties in one place for storage and display, we conceived of a mechanism that views the entirety of Keio University as a single distributed museum, with KeMCo acting as the hub. To that end, we equipped it not only with storage and exhibition floors but also a creation studio, and put effort into enhancing the digital environment.

The keyword for KeMCo is "vacant lot." While it houses and permanently displays the Century Akao Collection, we view it as a "commons" that emphasizes creating interaction through cultural properties. We operate both the storage and exhibition rooms fluidly, construct new contexts for cultural properties, utilize them as educational content, and foster interaction not only with university students but also with students from affiliated schools. Furthermore, the concept is to promote interaction with local and international communities.

First, I would like to ask for a few words on the meaning of a university having a museum, while you introduce your recent activities as a self-introduction. Mr. Namiki, would you like to start?

Kyoto Institute of Technology has two predecessor schools: the Kyoto Sericulture Training Institute, established in 1899 to support Kyoto's textile industry, and the Kyoto Higher School of Arts and Crafts, established in 1902. These two merged in 1949 to become Kyoto Institute of Technology. It is a school formed by the union of the arts and crafts sector—specifically the crafts sector, which is a traditional industry of Kyoto—and the textile sector.

The Museum and Archives was established in 1980, based on the collections of those two predecessors. Until then, all stored materials were under the management of the university library. However, since the opening of the Kyoto Higher School of Arts and Crafts, there were many arts and crafts items such as Art Nouveau crafts and posters used as teaching materials, and there seems to have been a movement from quite early on to preserve them in an independent facility.

The core of the collection at the Museum and Archives consists of items purchased as teaching materials to show students for the purpose of modernizing Kyoto's traditional industries, basically from the late 19th century to the early 20th century. However, since it includes posters by Lautrec and Mucha, we exhibit and open them to the public as arts and crafts—so-called cultural properties.

Basically, we protect, store, and exhibit the collection that has existed since the school's opening. However, currently in the city of Kyoto, traditional industry businesses who can no longer hold onto valuable old items, such as Yuzen designs, often come to us for advice, and we frequently receive donations.

Therefore, there are almost no substantial purchases. We cannot accept all donations, but regarding parts related to the modernization of Kyoto's traditional industries, we want to store, research, and exhibit them at our university as much as possible.

Also, in Kyoto, we have formed the "Kyoto University Museum Alliance" since 2011, and we are active as the presiding school. Currently, 14 museums from 14 universities in Kyoto belong to it, and since 2012, we have held joint exhibitions in Kyoto city as well as in Kyushu and Tohoku.

University museums have various roles, but our school accumulates teaching materials purchased for education and research since its opening, or works by our students, as the history of the university, and exhibits them not just as university history but as the history of modern Kyoto. I believe that is one of the missions of our Museum and Archives.

Next, Ms. Okamuro, please.

The Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum at Waseda University (Enpaku) was founded by Tsubouchi Shoyo in 1928 and celebrated its 90th anniversary in 2018. The former director, Bunzo Torigoe, who carried out a major reform of the Theatre Museum, left a famous quote: "If the library is the brain of Waseda University, the Theatre Museum is the face of Waseda University." We operate with that kind of pride.

Our museum was started by Tsubouchi Shoyo with the philosophy of "collecting theatrical materials from all times and places." It is a museum that truly collects theatrical materials from all over the world and throughout history. This type of institution is probably unique in Asia and one of the few in the world. We have a very large number of items, with a diverse collection reaching one million pieces. Furthermore, the building itself is designated as a Tangible Cultural Property of Shinjuku Ward.

Unlike fine art, theatrical and film materials include things that would normally be thrown away. In addition to flyers and tickets, paper media include Kabuki ledgers, Joruri books, old books, library books, magazines, scripts, screenplays, handwritten manuscripts, drafts, flyers, posters, photographs, letters, diaries, telegrams, public relations magazines, clippings, and memos. Regarding performances, we have costumes, shoes, accessories, props, masks, models, and blueprints. For video and audio, we have SP and LP records, cassette tapes, VHS, 8mm film, CDs, and even dolls and dressing tables.

Also, our collection of actor prints (yakusha-e) is world-class; for example, we have materials of cultural property grade such as the "Onna Kabuki-zu Byobu" (Screen Painting of Women's Kabuki). We also have various costumes, such as those of Fubuki Koshiji, as well as Kabuki and Noh costumes.

We also collect film materials. Since they were not destroyed in air raids, we have films that the National Film Archive of Japan in Kyobashi does not possess, such as the 1916 work "The Great Fire at Kaminarimon: The Blood-Stained Standard" (starring Matsunosuke Onoe).

The Theatre Museum used to be a place with a very high threshold for students. When I became the director in 2013, I thought it was strange that students didn't come even though it was at the university, and I wanted to encourage many students to visit as a university museum. I aimed for the museum to be not just an educational and cultural facility but a place for communication, and I thought about promoting it internally and externally as the cultural face of the university.

Until then, the Theatre Museum had no interest at all in attracting visitors. The thinking was that it was enough to hold exhibitions that satisfied experts, so I thought this had to change and implemented various measures. One was strengthening the visual aspect, putting effort into spatial design. And as a participatory exhibition, we set up an experience corner.

Also, there was no public relations officer until I became director, so I created a PR position and used SNS and online news to advertise widely and emphasize that we hold a very broad range of exhibitions.

Last year, thinking about what we could do during the COVID-19 pandemic, we held an online exhibition titled "Lost Performances: Documentation and Memory of the Pandemic and Theatre," which received a great response. During the pandemic, many theatrical performances were forced to be cancelled or postponed, leaving a gaping hole in theatrical history. Thinking that we must not let it be forgotten, we collected various materials such as flyers, posters, and scripts that were no longer used and held an online exhibition.

Regarding the meaning of a university having a museum, when I think about how to help students develop imagination for others in today's society that emphasizes economy and efficiency, I believe that the existence of museums or exposure to theatrical culture is extremely important. The Theatre Museum connects the fields of research and practice, and while staying close to practice, we strive to lead that into research results.

Now, Mr. Hosaka, please.

I started working as the director of the Shiga Museum of Modern Art (Shiga Museum of Art from April) this January. Before that, I worked at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo for 20 years, organizing various exhibitions and being involved in collecting for the collection. So, professionally, I have had no involvement with university museums at all.

The exhibitions I have handled so far cover various genres, and to be honest, I am at a loss when asked what my specialty is. Most recently, there is an exhibition of the architect Kengo Kuma starting in June at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, but on the other hand, I have long been involved in exhibitions of creative expression by people who are not art professionals, known as Art Brut.

Also, since I have consistently handled exhibitions of modern and contemporary art, instead of having a specialty, I am always thinking about what curation is and what the meaning of places that hold exhibitions, like museums, is. While handling exhibitions of various genres, I often rely on university museums when I need to go and do research.

For an architectural exhibition, I viewed the Togo Murano archives at Kyoto Institute of Technology, and I remember viewing the Beckett exhibition at Enpaku while developing a plan for a contemporary art exhibition. In other words, I am involved as a user.

By the way, I feel that university museums in Japan and overseas are quite different. I think one major issue is where one learns curation. This overlaps with the fact that the Japanese curator certification has become a mere formality, but I believe university museums could function more as places to learn curation, not just museology.

In university museums in other countries, there are cases where they have their own graduate students participate in a kind of competition and let the winner actually organize that exhibition. I hope they can function as places where curation can be learned practically in that way.

Another thing, from the perspective of Art Brut, is that Art Brut still has an unsettled evaluation even in museums. And in the United States especially, there are many cases where private collections of Art Brut are donated to university museums.

As a result, exhibitions are naturally planned, and through that, students can come into contact with very vivid curation and research activities, such as what art is and how to contextualize and interpret things that have no fixed evaluation within so-called art history. I think that serves as a foundation and is able to provide stimulation to museums outside of universities.

I believe that kind of approach is what will be required of Japanese university museums in the future.

Now, Mr. Watanabe, who is also the creator of the "Museum Commons" idea for KeMCo, please.

I moved to the university after working in museums for quite a long time. The first thing that surprised me when I moved to the Keio University Art Center (KUAC) was that there was no museum and no sign of creating one. Even at gatherings of university art professionals, when I said, "Keio doesn't have a museum," people were always surprised (laughs). Eventually, KUAC obtained a very small exhibition room (Art Space), which has now become a museum-equivalent facility and contributes to education for curator certification, but this Keio Museum Commons is the first attempt to create a proper museum.

However, this place also has physical constraints as a small space, and as it starts in a somewhat interstitial way, I thought there might be something a university museum could do in a place different from the main line of Japanese museums.

If it was going to be small anyway, and since Keio is a latecomer, I thought about whether we could have the idea of a distributed museum by collaborating with various departments within the university, so we decided to go with the name "Museum Commons" rather than just a museum.

It is not realistic for a latecomer university to have a large-scale museum, and I think the centralized approach of gathering collection items held by various departments into a single storage facility is itself not very 21st-century. So, I wondered if we could create a small but functional and light organization and mechanism that has the function of people coming and going with that place as a hub.

Therefore, we decided to make the overall concept a "vacant lot" and are devising ways to have that "vacant lot-ness."

As for what a vacant lot actually is, having worked in completely different phases—a public museum like the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo and a private university—I feel that Japanese museums have progressed in a polarized form: either being fully public or private.

However, I feel that an alternative to that is becoming necessary. Talking with students, I have recently realized that it is a sensation shared even by the younger generation, but I wondered if we could create a place where everyone can share something or engage in creative activities within loose rules, rather than strict rules—a sort of membership-like way of thinking. That is the idea of the "vacant lot."

In other words, it is about whether we can create a place where there are loosely shared rules and where members change according to the occasion while being creative. Also, in a vacant lot without play equipment, everyone improvises and creates their own games, right? For example, if one tree is growing, they might use it for various purposes. I think it would be good if the KeMCo building itself is used in various ways like that.

I feel that the global situation for museums, especially public ones, is that the larger they are, the more they are becoming unable to move. If that is the case, I believe there is meaning in the mobility that a university museum possesses. Of course, if many people come, it leads to evaluation, but I don't think that is necessarily the primary objective, and I think the pressure to constantly seek publicness is not that intense.

As mentioned in Mr. Hosaka's talk, since university museums overseas are engaging in pioneering activities, I believe that university museums have the potential to do challenging things.

I very much sympathize with the mobility that Mr. Watanabe just mentioned. Enpaku also aims to be an aggressive museum. Since it is very small as a museum, we always act with a sense of guerrilla tactics in mind.

It has mobility in terms of size. If you try to do something new in a university department, it becomes a huge uproar, but at Enpaku, if someone comes up with something interesting, we can do it relatively quickly.

In the case of Enpaku or the Museum and Archives at Kyoto Institute of Technology, is it the case that you don't need to get approval for programs from the university side and can decide independently?

Regarding Enpaku, we don't get approval from anywhere, and there are no regulations from the university. So, we operate very freely.

In our case as well, we don't particularly consult the university; we discuss what kind of exhibitions to hold in the annual plan, but so far, no complaints have come from anywhere.

Subsidies from the Agency for Cultural Affairs are also applied for through the university, but the ones submitted by the Museum and Archives pass through, so I don't feel we are under much restriction. Conversely, I think we are able to relatively freely do things independently at the Museum and Archives, such as partnering with other universities or other museums through museum alliances.

I see. Mr. Watanabe mentioned fully public and private earlier, but truly, the public side is stifling right now. This is a story that happened at a certain museum: when a curator tried to use the word "refugee" in an exhibition title, a complaint came in midway saying it was strange to make that a theme because the Japanese government maintains that it does not have a refugee problem.

While works of political criticism are constantly becoming issues even at the rental venue level, if university museums are in a situation where it is easy to speak out while academic freedom and university autonomy are recognized, like the guerrilla nature Ms. Okamuro mentioned, I hope you will make the most of that. I feel bad, as if I am entrusting you with things we cannot do ourselves.

When we held "Inside/Out: Video Culture and LGBTQ+" until recently, there were cautious views even internally. Since there are various ways of thinking even when you simply say LGBTQ+, people said we might be scolded by someone, so we studied repeatedly within the museum and proceeded quite cautiously, but in the end, there was not a single criticism. I do think this might have been realized precisely because it was a university museum.

That's right. When I first moved to Keio, I was surprised by how different it was from the number of "OKs" I had to get at my former workplace, the art museum. It was certainly a tremendous sense of liberation to be able to do something just by saying "I want to do this" and having the Director say "Yes, go ahead."

That is indeed very important; there is mobility because the scale is small, and I think there is a sense of avant-gardism (vanguard nature) or academic freedom that university museums possess.

Unfortunately, I feel that so-called art museums have become more cramped than when I was there; I feel that things that could be done relatively normally at an ordinary public art museum 20 years ago now require permission for every single thing.

We also submit the annual projects we do at KUAC to the steering committee, but if something not in the annual project is suddenly carried out, we don't get in trouble. I think having the mobility to do something as soon as you think of it is an important role of a university museum.

In the future, while interacting with people from public museums, I think it would be interesting if routes of cooperation were created, such as saying, "If you can't do it at your museum, why not do it here?"

On the other hand, in the case of Enpaku, I myself do not have a curator certification and am a complete amateur regarding exhibitions. We currently have four curators, but in the past, exhibitions were often planned by researchers who were amateurs regarding exhibitions, so there was a problem that they tended to lean too much toward specialization.

I certainly think that attracting visitors should not become the end goal, but in order for the museum to become something open, I think we must also be conscious of having many guests come. That might be a specific issue for Enpaku, but we currently also emphasize the balance between what we want to do and social needs.

The next topic is about the possibilities of digital. Over the past year, partly because we have been forced to take various measures due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I feel there are situations where simply expanding the exhibition environment digitally is not enough to attract the interest of visitors.

At KeMCo as well, by having a creation studio inside the building for the first time as a museum, we emphasize practicing the interaction between physical and digital by involving students. I would like to hear your thoughts on the possibilities or limitations of the digital environment, especially regarding initiatives during the pandemic.

I have seen KeMCo's wonderfully sophisticated virtual museum (Keio Exhibition RoomX: jinkan kosai (society)), but ours is very diverse.

Enpaku puts a lot of effort into digital archives. We opened our digital archive collection in 2001 and have a 20-year history regarding digital archives. We have many accesses from overseas, starting with actor prints.

Among the things we have been putting effort into recently is the "Release of Noh Mask 3D Data." It has a very good reputation among people overseas as well, but taking the earthquake disaster as a lesson, we are pursuing reproducibility by preserving precious materials as 3D data. Since it is digital data, you can flip it over on the screen, and the expression of a Noh mask changes depending on the angle. You can experience such things on a PC or smartphone.

Also, to commemorate the exhibition of Kawanabe Kyosai's "Shintomiza Yokai Hikimaku" (Ghost Curtain for the Shintomiza Theatre) at the British Museum, we produced an animation based on high-definition images taken at Toppan Printing's studio. This received a great response at the unveiling in London.

The reason we created such a thing is that we are currently focusing on how to breathe new life into materials of classical performing arts using modern technology. We want students to be interested.

We are also putting effort into an "Automatic Kuzushiji Recognition System." We are developing this with the hope that not only overseas researchers but also students will become familiar with classical materials.

Furthermore, while we have been digitizing things that have physical originals until now, I think how to handle born-digital materials will become a challenge from now on.

I think digital data is one important element for becoming an open museum. In the past, museums competed based on how many precious physical objects they possessed, and while the fact that physical objects are extremely important remains unchanged, I think we are now being asked how to open them up by turning them into digital data.

The topic of born-digital was just mentioned. How to secure and release content from that is a challenge, but audio data and video data of someone speaking should have accumulated quite a bit.

At my previous post, the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, for example, there is audio data of Kaii Higashiyama speaking. However, to release that, we used to think about transcribing it, editing it, and putting it out in a paper medium such as a bulletin.

But having experienced the pandemic, setting aside the issue of rights processing, the atmosphere has become such that it's okay to just put it out even if the sound is hard to hear.

In other words, until now, museums thought of objects as content, but I feel that even with the same archive materials, by regarding non-material things as content and releasing them, we will be able to attract people's attention.

In other words, I think what museums will consider as content in the future is being questioned.

One more thing about born-digital: a constant issue in architectural exhibitions is the discussion of how to create architectural exhibitions after the born-digital era. I'm sorry for pushing things we can't do onto university museums, but precisely because Kyoto Institute of Technology also has an architecture major, I hope you will open up the possibilities of architectural exhibitions in the born-digital era.

That is a very important point. Currently, Matsuda-san and I are in a place called "KeMCo StudI/O," which corresponds to KeMCo's new FabLab, and one of KeMCo's concepts is the fusion of analog and digital. The studio exists as an extension of the vacant lot idea, based on the thought that a real "place" might actually be necessary for digital dissemination.

Attempts using various digital tools have been actively carried out in art exhibitions recently, but I feel that even if people say "we will disseminate digitally," it often isn't very connected to the exhibits.

Also, even if expert professors show cutting-edge digital technology saying "isn't this amazing," those of us who exhibit objects might not really understand what is so amazing. There isn't much communication between the object side and the digital side.

I thought that FabLab-like things in universities were also focusing only on disseminating digitally, and the input side wasn't being considered much. The meaning of having a FabLab in KeMCo is that by having a site (place) that connects digital to where there are objects called collections, we aim to be able to connect them and expand through digital.

As Mr. Watanabe said, we created this studio because an analog place is necessary for the sake of digital as well, but I would like to value the impact that objects have on the encounter with things expected of a museum.

As the next topic, I would like to think about how museums expand, taking the impact of objects as a starting point. In the case of university museums, doesn't it start from education and then expand to collaboration between universities, local communities, and further to international collaboration?

At KeMCo, we have started offering our own courses this year, and within them, Mr. Watanabe has started something called "Object-Based Learning" (OBL). Could you introduce it a little?

Object-Based Learning has not yet really entered university education in Japan, but it is a method that has been very actively adopted in Australia and the UK, especially over the last 10 years or so, as a way to incorporate objects into university education.

It is, so to speak, a form of active learning, a method originally often used in primary and secondary education. Simply put, it aims to derive various educational effects through direct contact between pupils/students and objects. Overseas, it has been frequently used in higher education and university education in recent years. I want to make this the core of Keio Museum Commons' education.

In fact, in Japan, education in the form of direct contact with works as objects has been conducted not in elementary and junior high schools, but in workshops for children within museum education, and it is in a situation quite disconnected from school education.

To simplify OBL, it starts from how to describe a certain object. If there are ten students, they all say different things about the size of a cup, such as "a size that fits in the hand," "the same size as a convenience store cup," or "about 10 centimeters high." It starts from experiencing that objects can be seen in very multifaceted ways.

Museums basically respond to objects with the logic of the showing side. Even in a university museum, it becomes a method where the audience and students experience it within a story created through curation. However, it is an educational system that starts from the object, creating opportunities for the viewing and learning side to contact objects more directly.

Japan has strong peer pressure, and people tend to assume that everyone has the same background, but I think just describing a single cup becomes an opportunity to realize that people actually see things in completely different ways. Through that, if students can gain opportunities to liberate themselves to think and feel more diversely, I think there will be interesting discoveries.

Also, on the side of providing omnibus classes, Matsuda-san is an expert in English literature, I am in art history, and another person, Hiroshi Shigeno from the Faculty of Science and Technology, is a digital expert, so it would be intriguing if completely different perspectives open up for the students. At the same time, I think it would be interesting if it becomes a communication tool for the researchers who gather there and leads to cross-disciplinary research.

Is this something that is integrated into the curriculum for credit?

That's right. We have been running trial classes since last autumn, and from this April, classes will be held in earnest for all faculties. It is planned to be a subject that students from any faculty can take for credit. However, it is not currently linked to the museum curator certification subjects.

I see. In our case, separately from the museum internship, as a project subsidized by the Agency for Cultural Affairs, students majoring in design use collection materials to create museum goods. This fiscal year, with the cooperation of Toyo Aluminium K.K., the assignment was to create museum goods using aluminum powder. For example, they might create stationery and envelopes by utilizing the luster of Tiffany glassware with aluminum powder.

In this way, we use the creation of attractive goods based on actual collection items, with the addition of new insights, as a design assignment. This provides an opportunity for students to learn what kind of materials are in the collection. It also leads them to think about how to utilize those expressions in other media, so it serves as a form of design education.

To begin with, our collection started as teaching materials, so students use it relatively often. They actually see the exhibitions and do sketches there.

The museum internship is attended not only by design students but also by students of applied biology and mechanical engineering, and we teach them how to handle materials through the process of putting on an exhibition. In April, we give the students a catalog of the collection and tell them to think of a theme they like. The interns discuss it to narrow down the theme in the first half, and in the second half, they put together an exhibition while handling the works.

The students think about various things through the objects, and they don't just hold an exhibition; they also create posters. In this way, we try to utilize the collection materials for student education as much as possible.

Also, as architecture was mentioned earlier, when we hold an exhibition related to architecture once or twice a year, we have students create models from drawings. This serves as training for students to read drawings and also as training for actually making models. And by exhibiting them in a paid exhibition, it becomes an encouragement and they also take responsibility.

In this way, we utilize the materials of the Museum of Kyoto Institute of Technology as much as possible within the practical experience of architectural design. Since it is a small university, we want students to utilize the museum's materials in that way as much as possible.

Hearing your story, I thought I would definitely like to try producing museum goods at KeMCo as well.

At the Theatre Museum, there was a period when we held museum internship classes, but we are not doing that now. Therefore, it is difficult to incorporate activities into education, but we are making various efforts to get students to actually come to the museum.

Digitalization initiatives are one such effort, but today's students tend to think that nothing exists in this world except for things they are interested in. For example, since they sometimes find it difficult to take an interest in historical things, we focus on how to make students realize that it is something related to them, especially when exhibiting classical performing arts. For example, in exhibitions of classical performing arts, we strive to create points of connection with the present day.

If we create an entrance for them, students will indeed come, so I would like to continue connecting the university and the museum in that way.

Mr. Hosaka, from your position outside the university, please share your thoughts on the connection with the community.

When I think about university museums, the one I think is most ideal is a museum in Germany called the Pinakothek der Moderne. It is a complex museum, a modern and contemporary art museum that includes a design museum, an architecture museum, and a picture gallery, but the architecture museum is operated by the Technical University of Munich.

The Technical University of Munich is quite old in Europe and has architectural materials from around the 19th century, and it had a museum based on those, but when the Pinakothek der Moderne expanded its building, it moved in as part of it. It left the university grounds. Moreover, they don't just display the collection; they hold actual and challenging special exhibitions.

In short, for them, the method of researching and outputting architecture has changed from writing papers to presenting in the form of exhibitions. In fact, the name of the university major has become "Architectural History + Curatorial Studies," and students are involved in the exhibitions held at the museum.

Furthermore, for example, in collaboration with Harvard's GSD, the Graduate School of Design, they operate exhibitions using a flat network unique to universities. This might be an overly ideal case, and it might be slightly different from the connection with the community, but it is interesting as an example of the inter-university discussion.

In any case, I think it is important to use the medium of exhibitions as a method of research output. In the coming era, there must be presentations that cannot be made without using audio language, visual language, and everything else.

Moreover, since many people are more accustomed to complex experiences, such as listening to audio while watching video, rather than reading papers, shouldn't the academic world also move closer to that?

What you just said is very interesting, and I thought that the fact that research and how to disseminate that research are inseparable is common to all fields.

The final topic is about how to give meaning to collections, or what kind of mission is used for collection building. I suspect that each of you has a different position.

The Theatre Museum has the peculiarity of being a specialized theater museum. We also have a research center called the Collaborative Research Center for Theatre and Film Arts, which is certified as a Joint Usage/Research Center by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, so research and the museum are very closely linked.

We are also focusing on disseminating the research results of the research center through the museum, and the automatic transcription system for cursive script (kuzushiji) that I introduced earlier is one part of that. Indeed, we collect materials in a way that is linked to research.

For example, we have received a donation of a large amount of valuable materials from the family of the playwright Minoru Betsuyaku, who passed away last year. So, we set up a research team at the Collaborative Research Center for Theatre and Film Arts, and we plan to hold a special exhibition from this May as a result of that research, and we are also proceeding with the digitalization of the materials. We are conscious of collecting materials that connect these three points: the digital archive, the research center, and the museum.

However, this is a big problem, but we don't have enough storage space. Since it was originally a small museum, we have been allowed to place materials in various places around the university, but everywhere is already full. Therefore, even if we receive an offer to donate valuable materials, we are in a situation where we first have to think about where to store them.

The problem of accepting materials and storage space might be a common concern. Mr. Namiki, how about you?

Regarding the storage problem, it's exactly the same; we are in a situation where we are maneuvering in various places to secure space.

I am currently the Director of the Museum of Kyoto Institute of Technology, but for the past three years, I have also served as the Director of the University Library. Since it is a small university, I am actively initiating ML collaboration—collaboration between the Museum and the Library—within the university. To begin with, the materials in the Museum of Kyoto Institute of Technology were originally managed collectively by the University Library, and the museum was created by separating the art and craft materials from them. In fact, the library has quite valuable books related to design.

Therefore, in the form of a design archive, we are collaborating to display design-related books and the actual materials of the Museum of Kyoto Institute of Technology by linking them as organically as possible, and we always display related library materials at the museum's exhibitions.

Furthermore, since we have set the modernization of Kyoto's traditional industries as a major theme for the museum's collection and donated materials, we receive various things related to that, and in doing so, we try to work with the alumni association.

Among the alumni, there are many people involved in Kyoto's traditional industries, such as Nishijin-ori weaving and Kiyomizu-yaki pottery, and we sometimes receive materials. We are creating a kind of university history archive with the aim of excavating and organizing the university's history together.

Through this, we have clearly set a direction to clarify the modernization of Kyoto's traditional crafts from the aspects of materials, teaching materials, and objects, and have made it a pillar of the Museum of Kyoto Institute of Technology. We also assemble exhibitions based on that.

Originally, the principals of this school in the Meiji era were scientists who researched synthetic dyes and chemical glazes, and the theme since the school's opening has been the fusion of science and art. Regarding the materials in the museum's collection, we are considering whether we can create projects that link science and art, rather than just art, using the new perspective of how they were used from a scientific standpoint.

Collaboration between museums and libraries is one of the things KeMCo wants to actively promote in the future. Mr. Hosaka, please speak from your public position.

My previous post, the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, had a kind of grand mission to create a collection that could trace the history of Japanese art since the modern era, and based on that, we searched for, selected, and acquired works.

In the case of Shiga, we mainly collect cultural properties within that area, but the reason we do that is, for one, to enable local people to have an attachment to or pride in their own region. We do this including excavation and adding new history.

For example, the reason Shiga is currently collecting Art Brut is because Shiga has a history of recognizing the value of those works ahead of other prefectures.

Based on those examples of the nation and prefectures, when I think about what kind of policy could exist for university museum collection building, the story of Kyoto Institute of Technology just now is very helpful. One could say that materials concerning the modernization of Kyoto's traditional industries alone fall within the scope of public museums, but you said that you are creating projects that link science and art based on them. In other words, disciplines are connected with materials as the axis, and as a result, scholarship is opened up.

This is something that is difficult to do in public museums, and if we stand on this premise, I think the way KeMCo is trying to think of the collections within the university as a commons will truly shine.

Utilizing materials as a commons is quite a significant thing. Museums research, interpret, and exhibit the materials they hold, and as a result, the value of those materials increases in various ways. When that happens, inevitably, because they are valuable materials, people don't want to let them out much or let others use them.

In the case of art museums among museums, that bias is strongly applied, but if the philosophy of thinking about various materials, including artworks, flatly and treating them as a commons can be established, I think it will be very suggestive for future museums.

Earlier, Ms. Okamuro said that the interests of young people are changing, and indeed, young people do not view art as something special and perceive things flatly. If museums are to face such changes in reality sincerely, I think what KeMCo is doing has great potential.

Mr. Watanabe, what about KeMCo's collection building in the future?

I am very grateful for your expectations, but while saying that Keio is the oldest university in Japan, there was no museum until now. When I think about what can be done when starting as the last to join, I think that, conversely, there is freedom. Even if we receive the Century Akao Collection, it's not that there is a KeMCo collection policy.

Originally, I think a museum is a "storehouse." However, since the school was founded 160 years ago and we haven't built a storehouse, then what we should build now is not a storehouse, but if we could create a place like a vacant lot where various things can come and go, that might be effective. This is KeMCo's somewhat "relying on others" idea of collection building.

There are parts of it that are a desperate measure. There are cultural properties in small amounts in various places, and the departments and researchers who hold them won't let go of them. Therefore, even if a newly created museum says it will house them, it won't go well, and it will immediately get stuck with storage problems. So, the idea was conceived from the point of how such things could function more organically within the school by shifting the perspective. In that sense, there's no such thing as collection building.

Moreover, in the case of Keio, it is sometimes the affiliated schools that have better things. So, while having opportunities for the students studying there to learn that "this painting is this kind of thing," I hope we can achieve a loose, vacant-lot-like collection building by having the form of a commons, rather than a museum with a capital M.

Since we've moved on to talking about the future, I'd like to ask our seniors for a final word of expectation or advice for KeMCo as a late-starting university museum.

As Mr. Watanabe said, I think there are things that can be done because it is a late starter. Currently, our facility is 40 years old and becoming outdated, and we have no storage space, so I hope you will continue to communicate in a way that shows the "vacant lot" quality as a model.

When the talk of rebuilding the Museum of Kyoto Institute of Technology eventually comes up, I think we might be able to use it as a reference, and my expectations have grown today.

Ms. Okamuro from Waseda, which is in a position to be constantly compared as a fellow private university, what do you think?

I also thought the story of the vacant lot was very interesting. We are also conscious of having students come, but I realized today that involving students is still not enough. Therefore, I would like to watch with interest how the vacant lot functions in the future, and I hope you will continue to provide us with stimulation.

We have received much help from the Keio University Art Center (KUAC) in the past, so I hope we can continue to collaborate and do something together even more than before. I would like to build a deeper and more stimulating relationship.

Now, Mr. Hosaka. Please tell us what you expect from the standpoint of a public museum and as a graduate.

It is very interesting that KeMCo is now daring to try to do things with the word "vacant lot," which is hardly a suitable catchphrase for a museum.

I think it is a story that also gives a lot of suggestions for the way of collaboration that many public art museums have as a challenge. Just as Keio once stimulated the art industry by being one of the first to create an art management course, I hope that this time, with the form of a new museum, you will stimulate a wider area, including things other than art.

Since I have received such generous evaluations of KeMCo, I will do my best not to disappoint everyone.

I believe that the key to utilizing our small size and mobility is to have many people help us. I would be grateful if you could continue to support KeMCo and cooperate from time to time, given the connection of participating in this roundtable discussion today.

I hope you will come and visit our vacant lot. I look forward to seeing you in person next time, rather than on Zoom. Thank you very much for your time today.