第五届亚洲美术馆馆长论坛各国馆长发言内容
HAYASHIDA Hideki 东京国立艺术中心馆长
发言提纲：
Forum Topics：
The contemporary functions and management characteristics of Asian art museums
The harmonious development between art museums and modern cities
The exchanges and communications between Asian and Western art museums
Regarding Topic 1:
Japan’s Museum Law was enacted in 1951, but at the time there were only around 200 museums in the country, so the law was aimed at selecting those museums that merited protection and support, and at securing and fostering professional museum staff.
Now that there are more than 5,700 museums in Japan, of a variety of types, including art museums, history museums and science museums, many of them are not covered by the law. Moreover, government subsidies for museums have been eliminated due to the fiscal difficulties in Japan. These changes have made it necessary to revise the Museum Law, although the specific content of this revision is still under consideration.
It is significant that there are events like this Asian Art Museum Directors’ Forum, where information on various countries’ museum systems and policies for reviving art museums can be exchanged and systems better suited to the current times considered.
There is a consensus among the general public in Japan on the country’s policies to protect cultural assets. The Tokyo National Museum, which oversees antique cultural assets, has a long history that stretches back 137 years to its establishment in 1873. In contrast, the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, responsible for modern and contemporary works of art, opened 58 years ago, in 1952, as the first national art museum in Japan. More effort is needed for museums handling modern and contemporary artworks to enjoy the same degree of support among Japanese people as museums that preserve cultural assets. And this is probably a task that is common to Asia as a whole.
Many Japanese museums, facing the difficulty of attracting large numbers of visitors only with their own collections, have teamed up with newspaper publishers or other partners to present special, short-term exhibitions of works on loan from art museums in Europe and elsewhere. Art museums in Japan have been fortunate that major media firms in the country have had a tradition teaming up with museums to host large-scale exhibitions—both as part of the firms’ philanthropic efforts and because it makes good business sense. It is unclear whether this tradition will endure, though, now that those firms face worsening business conditions under the impact of the rise of the “new media” and the deep recession.
Many local governments built art museums, particularly back in the 1990s when the Japanese economy was doing well. But today the serious problem has arisen of many governments reducing such activities because of the decline of their fiscal health.
Many art museums lack the funds to enrich their collections, and some of them have had to close. Changes have been made in the Japanese tax system to encourage donations, but this has not yet generated a major benefit because the social situation in Japan differs from that of the United States, where donations are common.
When it comes to building art museums, I believe it is important to have a stable fiscal base that remains in place well into the future.
Now there are five national art museums in Japan. Given the worsening fiscal situation of the Japanese government, state funding for these museums has been shrinking year after year. Moreover, around ten years ago, the Independent Administrative Institution, or IAI, system was introduced, and now the five national art museums are affiliated with Independent Administrative Institution National Museum of Art. This IAI system first emerged among European countries and was then adopted by Japan. In recent years, other countries in Asia have been adopting this system, and it seems that still more are considering its introduction.
Under the system, each IAI is allowed a certain amount of freedom to conduct its activities, but it must clarify its goals and plans. The government then evaluates them according to the degree of progress achieved. For this reason, art museums are being administered on the basis of an acute awareness of the evaluation results. One example of this is the large increase in visitors at the national art museums since they became an IAI. In Japan’s case, however, art museums are being called on to increase their revenue because government policies have been reducing funding for them every year. Art museums want changes to be made in the IAI system because even if museum revenue surpasses budget estimates, they are not allowed to use that surplus at their own discretion.
In introducing this system, the important issue for art museums is whether they will receive the necessary financial support from the government.
There has been an increasingly strong trend in recent years for governments to attempt to have the views of their citizens directly reflected in policies to the greatest extent possible. And the same is true of the policies adopted for supporting art museums. Given this situation, there is a growing awareness among museum administrators of the need to make every effort to incorporate citizens’ views into the way museums are run, while also doing their best to have the public better understand the importance of art museums.
Based on this perspective, the Japanese Association of Museums has created a report that emphasizes the need for museums to adopt the appropriate stance of “viewing things from the perspective of citizens and creating museums together with them.” There is a growing interest in adopting the American approach to museum management, as well as a growing awareness that expanding educational activities is essential to gaining public understanding regarding art museums.
The major Western countries have systems for the state to subsidize the insurance costs that arise when transporting valuable works of art to exhibitions. Such expenditures have increased sharply in recent years because of the soaring price of art and the general rise in insurance rates due to the threat of terrorism.
This sort of system has not been in place in Japan up to now. This means that exhibition organizers have had to pay the cost of insurance, leading in turn to high exhibition ticket prices.
There has been a growing consensus recently that Japan should likewise introduce a national indemnity system for works of art. There is an increased possibility that this will become a reality now that preparations are underway within the government to draft specific policies.
This sort of system is expected to be necessary elsewhere in Asia, too, as the number of large-scale exhibitions is set to rise in the future.
A shared international awareness has emerged that raising the skill level of professional curators is essential to the enhancement of an art museum’s activities. The set of knowledge and skills required by professionals to handle the overall administration of an art museum is becoming increasingly complex. Even in Europe, curator systems differ depending on the country. I think that the sharing of experiences gained in Asian countries and consideration of how to make improvements could become one important theme for this forum.
The boundaries of the concept of “art” are expanding rapidly these days. In Japan, the view is gaining ground that art museums should play an even more active role when it comes to such fields as photography, fashion, architecture, design, manga, and anime. In these fields in particular, many Japanese artists are playing an active role, so expectations have arisen that such activities can also help to stimulate business development. There is also a growing chorus of voices calling for art museums to help boost tourism. The National Museum of Art faces the difficult task of figuring out how to respond to these calls despite limited financial and human resources.
Regarding Topic 2:
The “harmonious development between art museums and modern cities” is particularly important for public art museums established by local governments. National art museums have not tended to have strong ties with local communities, reflecting the traditional view that such museums serve the nation as a whole. But in recent years, with the growing awareness of the major role that museums can play in local development, there has been an increase in the number of requests from local governments and other bodies for the cooperation of national art museums.
The Mori Art Museum, which is a private art museum specializing in contemporary art, opened on the top of a high-rise building constructed by Mori Building in the center of Tokyo. This developer is promoting urban redevelopment in the Roppongi district, where the National Art Center, Tokyo, is also located. In the same area, the Suntory Museum of Art has been opened on the site of another large-scale redevelopment project headed up by a different major property developer. This revitalization of the area through the activities of art museums, and the attention thus generated, is highly welcomed by the National Art Center, Tokyo, from the perspective of its own development. We are doing our best to join forces and cooperate with the local authorities to contribute to this effort.
The National Art Center, Tokyo, and the two other art museums have been collaborating on various activities in their jointly created Roppongi Art Triangle project. This has drawn a great deal of attention as a successful case of an alliance between urban art museums.
In other districts of Tokyo, such as Marunouchi that is the major business and financial area, efforts are underway for art museums to team up and use art to promote urban redevelopment. In Europe, there are well-known examples of creative cities that have used art as a means of reviving after their factories were relocated to other countries. Many cities in Japan are adopting the same approach to make themselves more appealing.
Regarding Topic 3:
Up to the present, Japanese art museum personnel in Japan have mainly entered into bilateral exchanges, and the level of their participation in multinational exchanges has been low.
The Japanese Association of Museums and the Japanese National Committee for ICOM, the International Council of Museums, have joined forces to engage in an ongoing effort to improve this situation. In December 2009, the two organizations hosted the Conference of the Asian-Pacific Regional Alliance of ICOM in Tokyo. And they are calling for as many participants from Japan as possible to attend ICOM’s twenty-second General Conference, which will be held this November in Shanghai.
Another important task is to increase the number of Asian members of the International Committee of ICOM for Museums and Collections of Modern Art.
It is also important that we continue to host the Asian Art Museum Directors’ Forum as a vehicle for art museum personnel to network with each other and deepen their level of mutual cooperation.
The Japan Foundation and Australia-based Asialink, which both participated in this forum last year, are also supporting interaction between art museum professionals in Asia. It would be preferable to work together with them in the future when necessary.
