Job Tours at the National Art Center, Tokyo: Behind-the-Scenes Interviews by Interns! Vol. 1　Curatorial Department: Exhibitions

Tell us what kind of work you typically do!

I was hired by the National Art Center, Tokyo (hereafter, “NACT”) back when it was provisionally called the National Gallery and have been here close to 20 years, since the pre-museum opening preparatory stages. Before then I had always been a student, so this was my first real workplace. Now in the Office of Exhibitions, exhibitions are the focus of my work, but I started out in the Office of Education and Public Programs and was in charge of both exhibitions and education and public programs.

Exhibitions generally move on the time scale of three to five years. The long ones can be close to 10 years when things don’t go as planned. Because of this, I always have several ideas about the kinds of exhibitions I want to do saved up. Out of this stock of ideas, I’ll share ones which are a good fit for the times or which seem likely to be able to get funding at museum meetings. Then, if an idea is approved, we begin moving forward with it in earnest. When bringing up an idea at a meeting, usually if it isn’t around 60 to 70% worked out, it’ll be hard getting it through. We’ll ask newspapers and other organizations to co-sponsor the exhibition and seek cooperation in terms of support and provision of resources, etc. At the same time, we’ll engage in research to dig deeper into what the content of the exhibition will be.

At some art museums overseas, they’ll hold one major exhibition every five years or so, and will ultimately have around 100 people involved in its creation, from curators and research assistants down to interns. Unfortunately in Japan, however, we are not blessed with this degree of funding or personnel, and can’t divide up the labor like they do overseas either. Accordingly, depending on the situation, an exhibition will be run primarily by the head person in charge of it, from getting cooperation for the exhibition all the way to connected events.

At NACT, we’ll loosely divide up the work between curators based on their interests or general specialties. We roughly divide things up into categories like French or German art, contemporary art, manga, anime, etc. I’m in charge of things like design, fashion, and architecture, as well as fine art, but more minor, niche areas rather than mainstream stuff, like Eastern and Northern Europe.

As NACT has no standing collection, one of the principles of our activities is to be an art museum which introduces a variety of forms of artistic expression and presents new points of view. To cross boundaries, go beyond limits. To overcome various preconceived notions and create new relationships—that’s the kind of work I want us to accomplish. Having said that, if we really had 100 people on staff, we’d be able to do things like they do overseas, but the reality is we are nowhere near this ideal. I think, however, that if we—including interns—can implement projects and other activities that are somehow new and novel precisely because of our limitations, we can be an art museum which produces things that are fresh and raw.

Do you do all the planning for exhibitions and related events yourself?

We usually do them as a team consisting of a main person in charge and two to three sub-managers. In my case, I often present the art of artists who are currently active, and as I learn more and more about them, there will be more and more things I’ll want to share with everyone. So during the research process I’ll get all sorts of ideas for related events, as well. Even when I think I know about an artist’s works, talking with the artist directly or with people alive around the time the works were created will lead me to many new discoveries and being able to see the works from new angles. I feel that the real pleasure or the most fun thing about this job is that you go deeper and deeper as you ask various people to give you their help with your plan or teach you about something.

Please share what you majored in and researched in university!

I didn’t follow the path of a typical curator, so I’m not sure if this will be of use to you (laughs). For my master’s course, I majored in art history in the department of literature, but I chose rather minor areas of art history—Eastern Europe (Hungary) and Northern Europe (Finland). These are areas of art history which are practically unresearched. Since I was a child, I had a powerful desire to go to the secluded parts of Europe that weren’t really known about. Right when I was in high school, the Berlin Wall fell and it became possible to go to Eastern Europe. That’s when I decided I wanted to visit Budapest in Hungary. I heard that even though it was located in the center of Europe, the language used was Asiatic and that Hungarians were said to be “Asians in the middle of Europe,” and that made me want to go there someday.

This led to me studying Hungarian art. At first I went to study abroad in Hungary to research International Gothic art, but I found the streets of Budapest to be just very cute. Budapest’s cityscape is Art Nouveau, but it’s not just the Art Nouveau of France. I became interested in how Budapest’s cityscape came to be as Hungarian architecture went through an exploratory phase from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th. I thought it would be more interesting encapsulating that, and there were a lot of materials available, as well, so I wrote my master’s thesis on Hungarian nationalism and architecture.

While I was studying abroad in Hungary, there were a lot of Finnish people around as well. Finnish is also an Asiatic language. The movements for Finland to achieve independence from Russia and Hungary from Austria gained steam from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th. Their languages were also similar, and this led to strengthened cooperation and the building of a friendly relationship between the two nations. That relationship still stands today over a century later, and many Finnish people study abroad in Hungary. I hit it off well with them, and this led to me studying abroad in Helsinki, Finland during my doctoral course.

Famous architects in Finland include Eliel Saarinen and Alvar Aalto, and in fact Saarinen mingled with Hungarian architects and artists. It wasn’t used, but Saarinen drafted a city planning proposal for Budapest. Finding these kinds of things interesting, I researched them. And then one day I was just shy of 30. Feeling that I needed to find a job, I returned to Japan. NACT hired me and now here I am. I think I was lucky to get hired by NACT because it’s an art museum which seeks to take on new challenges in place of having a standard collection, but from an art museum’s standpoint, someone who is an expert in a field related to the works in their collection is desirable. Accordingly, I honestly can’t really recommend choosing unusual specialty fields like my own to people who are really aiming to become museum curators (laughs).

In order to find a job, I temporarily dropped out of my doctoral program, but lately I’ve been having a strong desire to explore fashion and have entered a doctoral course again. Instead of art history, however, I’m studying in a sociology graduate course. It’s hard getting time for personal research, my term of enrollment is almost up, and I’m not sure whether I’ll be able to write my thesis, however... Accordingly, and this also overlaps with our next exhibition, “Fashion in Japan 1945-2020,” but I’ve had an interest in and wanted to look into Japanese fashion in the 20th century after it became Westernized.

When talking about Japanese fashion, the prevailing view these days is that things got started when Japanese designers began being active on the global stage in the 1970s. However, what I want to know and dig into is what happened before then, and why such spectacular designers began being internationally recognized in the 1970s within a short, 25-year time span starting after Japan’s defeat in 1945. These desires became the basis of my ideas for the “Fashion in Japan 1945-2020” exhibit. In order also to properly understand the state of fashion today, I want to thoroughly research the outfits, trends, and social history from after WWII when Western clothing became the norm up until today.

You touched on this earlier, but what is something you found worthwhile or memorable in your work at NACT?

For me, it feels most worthwhile when I find something that isn’t well-known or has been forgotten and share that and it delights the people who see it. Some people say curators are gofers, and it certainly isn’t an easy job, but I’m truly happy when even just one visitor responds to and enjoys what we’ve done.

Unlike research, an exhibition is not something you can do alone; it requires the help of a lot of people to put together. Each person’s perspective is different and so is the work they do. I also often engage with people overseas, so I meet amazing people. It’s really fun and it makes me happy. I’m also able to work together with people who I’d never meet normally in regular life. Meeting people I respect and wishing I could be even a little like them...those moments make me so happy.

Is there anyone particularly memorable from among the people you’ve met?

Everyone, everyone has been truly unforgettable. Recently, Tadao Ando in particular made a lasting impression on me. His works are of course amazing but his personality, his enthusiasm is also on another level. During his exhibition, he came to the Center all the way from Osaka and gave gallery talks three times a week because he wanted to convey things in his own words. There were around three gallery talks a day, meaning nine a week. His talks were also really interesting, so the venue was always packed with around 200 people or so. He didn’t read off of script or anything, either. Each talk was different. Famous guests also participated in some. I’ll never forget the intense enthusiasm the venue was enveloped in—you’d never have thought it was taking place in an exhibition where you’re supposed to quietly look at the things on display.

I was also amazed that after the talks, he would converse with the attendees and sign photo books. Those conversations and signed books will be things people will treasure for the rest of their lives. I also think they will serve as seeds of future creativity. Seeing signing things in the moments in between making arrangements so as not to waste a single second really moved me.

Please share again what your motivation was for working in an art museum.

I spent time in the U.K. in high school, but before then I’d only gone to school in Japan, so I couldn’t speak English. The ways in which I could attract people’s interest were in the non-language-based classes of art and physical education, and I was very highly evaluated in them. Art class wasn’t about making such-and-such a piece or looking at art in a certain way; instead, you chose your own subjects to create a portfolio, explore, draw, and express yourself. In the education in the U.K., they promote people’s growth by praising them, and I was praised a lot for my art.

I was in London, and at that time on Sundays stores would close and the streets would be quiet, but art museums were open. With no other places to go out to and also because I was a total art lover, every Sunday I went around to the art museums in London. At first I’d just look at works and think “oh that’s cool” or “I’d never seen that before.” However, I gradually began looking at things from a curation perspective, like the exhibition’s theme or perspective or seeing a new way to present things.

In university I returned to Japan and was so happy to be able to study in Japanese. At first, I majored in French literature, but ultimately I realized that the field I really liked was art. However, I had already chosen the path of not creating works myself, so I decided to study art history.

The National Gallery (the provisional name of NACT) just happened to be starting to make preparations to open and I felt like an art museum like this with such a broad scope might be willing to hire me, so I applied. I am very happy that they chose me.

Could you share any projects you want to try doing in the future?

NACT has two exhibition galleries for the special exhibitions curators take charge of. In addition, we don’t have many staff members, so individual staff members will be in charge of numerous exhibitions. I’ll often be in charge of one or two a year, and each time I desperately want to try something new. I regret it later, however (laughs). Because exhibitions are put together by a lot of people, there are a lot of difficult things, but they’re also give you a huge sense of accomplishment, and that makes you want to keep going. In the “Vienna on the Path to Modernism” and “Cartier, Crystallization of Time” exhibitions, we exhibited over 300 pieces. They were tough learning experiences, but now with the “Fashion in Japan 1945-2020” exhibition, we’ll ultimately be displaying around 820 pieces (laughs). There were over 200 designers and other people involved in the exhibition.

I think that next time I’ll do something that is more limited and not as jam-packed, but there’s this desire within me to take on a new challenge each time. As a curator, I want to focus on an artist who’s never received much attention before, or to look at an artist who is known from a totally different perspective. I always have this desire within me not to do an exhibition which fits neatly into the mold of your typical art exhibition.

Please share a message for those looking to be curators and those looking to be interns here in the future!

To start, I think the interest in and desire to become an intern is great. I think that if you can take that can-do spirit and positive attitude and build up a lot of experience, a whole new world will open up before you. From the employer’s side, hearing that someone has done ABC and that they can do XYZ makes you feel like giving them a try. Meeting lots of different people and getting lots of different experience is something which I think will serve to make you a better person regardless of whether you become a curator or not.