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

Keio Museum Commons (KeMCo) will hold the exhibition "Ephemera: Printed Matter and Expression" from March 18 (until May 10). The exhibition introduces printed ephemera (flyers, posters, invitation postcards, etc.) from post-war art, where various forms of art developed, sourced from cultural institutions 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). Minami Gallery was established in 1956 by Kusuo Shimizu and was one of the leading galleries in 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 the gallery closed, and distributed printed materials such as invitation postcards, leaflets, and catalogs were produced for almost all of them. While the designs were tailored to each artist and work, the gallery demonstrated a unified style by standardizing formats and logotypes, and it is known for being a gallery that 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" from 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 that is 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 printed matter from that time 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)