The basic concept of the Keio Museum Commons (KeMCo), established in April 2019 and opened to the public in April 2021, is ‘a vacant open space’ (akichi). An akichi is not an vacant lot, but a space to which various people who loosely share common interests can bring objects and ideas, giving birth to new connections and directions. In order to pursue this concept academically, KeMCo has decided to publish a peer-reviewed academic journal, The KeMCo Review, once a year from the year 2022. The KeMCo Review welcomes submissions in such fields as museum studies, digital humanities, art history, cultural resources studies and book history, but as an academic open space, it will publish any studies that deal with cultural heritage through academic research or activity. Each volume has a special theme in order to give the issue its own special character but submissions not related to the special theme are welcome at any time. The submission guideline is available and shorter research notes as well as full-size articles are accepted. For the first volume, a good number of articles as well as research notes were submitted for review, and we are pleased to be able to publish seven original articles and seven research notes. The volume also includes a substantial special section on object-based learning (OBL) for the first time in Japan, with five articles and notes. The KeMCo Review is an academic forum that promotes interaction among the people who are involved with cultural heritage, as researchers, curators and creators. It is a medium for the cultural gaps that have gone unnoticed and undiscussed so far. We ask for your understanding and support for this new challenge by Keio Museum Commons.

View full abstract

This paper presents and analyses examples of practices of object-based learning, a learning method that allows learners to approach the object directly, and considers its potential. The practice using worksheets based on the OBL methodology provides a way to approach the artwork (object) directly and leads to the learner’s own understanding and development. It can be verified that learners achieve communication through objects and active learning by means of proactive verbalisation and step-by-step work. Moreover, through the process, they are also getting to the essence of the targeted artwork. Furthermore, it can be suggested that this method can also function as a tool for approaching unknown works (objects).

View full abstract

We must confront diverse social issues to improve the well-being of individuals, regions, and countries to welcome a sustainable society, which should lead to the global improvement of well-being. Simultaneously, understanding the coexistence of diverse cultures and peoples on this planet is crucial. Cross-disciplinary research between science and humanity is essential to pursue this goal, and object-based learning can be an efficacious approach. This article discusses object-based learning as an active learning and communication tool in the museum context while introducing each author’s example as a case study. Then, it explores the possibility of object-based learning, such as object therapy, to further support people’s well-being.

View full abstract

This paper is an exploratory discussion of “Object-based Learning” from a neuroscience perspective. Specifically, the paper divides learning into two categories, namely, acquisition of knowledge in the form of statements (explicit memory) and motor learning, and focuses on the latter. It is known that the type of motor learning and their retention effect can change depending on the external environment experienced by the body. In a study conducted by the authors, when two different motor learning environments, a rapidly increasing force field and a gradually increasing force field, were designed, the latter showed a significant prolongation of the retention effect. Thus, neuroscience research has examined the effects of a dynamical system that is an external environment in which perturbations to the body are dynamically altered, on learning. These findings suggest the importance of including the dynamically changing external environment as one of the objects in the range and focusing on the effects of its properties on learning.

View full abstract

In 2021, the Keio Museum Commons hosted a participatory exhibition “Object Reading: Eight Perspectives on Reading Objects”. Its aims were to introduce the university’s various collections, to illustrate the diverse and different perspectives on artworks and resources depending on the field of expertise, and to create a space for visitors to participate in a research-based relationship with objects. This paper reviews the challenges of “Object Reading” as a participatory exhibition and examines the redesign of the exhibition. First, an overview of object-based learning (OBL), which was employed as a framework for participation, and its relation to previous practices at KeMCo is described. Next, the issues involved in implementing OBL in exhibitions are clarified, and the redesign of the exhibition is examined from two aspects: the tools used at the venue and the exhibition design. Finally, these considerations address the role of participatory exhibitions in university museums and their potential connection to Citizen Science.

View full abstract

The recent museum’s attempts to include marginalised community is inspiring and have a significant meaning in creating a diverse and dynamic society. However, exclusion happens subtly and in the local context. Hence, It is crucial to look carefully and identify the overlooked community in the local context and create a museum experience where the audience could feel included and develop a sense of belonging. In this research, the paper focuses on the Keio Museum Commons (KeMCo). Preliminary research identifies international students as the overlooked community in KeMCo’s practice. Therefore the research aims to create inclusive KeMCo experience for international students through object-based learning (OBL). This research proposes adding a workshop component to exhibitions to give international students a voice to interpret objects from their home culture perspective through OBL. During workshop, International students actively engaged with the object and participated in the exhibition by interpreting the foreign object from their cultural background. They curated an online exhibition interpreting the KeMCo exhibition theme from a western cultural perspective in the end. This workshop helps increase inclusivity by enhancing participants’ engagement and participation, encouraging their developing of multi-narratives and giving them the power to be part of the decision-making process.

View full abstract

[in Japanese]

View full abstract

Tokyo Prefectural Art Museum opened in 1923. Calligraphy gradually transitioned to mural art by gaining the space of an art museum built with Western-style walls as a place for exhibition. The establishment of the calligraphy department at the Nitten in 1948 was a symbolic event that made the calligraphers of the time more aware of calligraphy as wall art. In this paper examines the significance of the opening of the calligraphy department at the Nitten by following the changes in calligraphic expression after the establishment of the Nitten calligraphy department. In particular, I will focus on the establishment process of the calligraphic style called the Nitten style and clarify its background. In addition, we will focus on the Nitten and Mainichi Calligraphy Exhibitions in 1956 and 1957, and confirm the ratio of Daiji-gana to the total number of exhibitions. Based on this, I would like to consider the relationship between the passing of Saishu Onoe and the development of Daiji-gana, and the impact of the existence of Nitten.

View full abstract

The Keio University Century Akao Collection contains Sugawara Dosai’s own handwritten manuscripts, ‘Eshi Seimei Kanji Ruisho’ (Biographies and seal records of painters classified by name) (3 volumes). These manuscripts are drafts of the 13-volume ‘Eshi Seimei Kanji Ruisho’ (13 volumes), manuscripts held in the National Diet Library, and are valuable historical documents that show how Dosai copied the seals of paintings he saw in person onto transparencies. Using these manuscripts as a starting point, the research results of two groups of copied materials, copies of Akita clan painters (in the Senshu Bunko Museum) and material from Kano Shusui family (deposited at the Aizu Museum, Waseda University), who were younger brothers of Dosai, are used to unravel his copying activities and the compilation project for the ‘Eshi Seimei Kanji Ruisho’. Furthermore, in the course of the above research, it was found that the majority of Dosai’s interest was directed towards Chinese painting and Japanese ink painting of the Muromachi period (1336−1573) when compared to the overall activities of Akita clan painters. Therefore, the various aspects of the reception of Muromachi ink paintings in the late Edo period (Late 18th − early 19th century) were explored, with specific examples of Dosai’s reproductions.

View full abstract

In recent years, there has been a genre of contemporary art known as ‘Bioart’. It is a genre of expression that has developed in the context of a mature information society and an environment in which transmedia has become possible. The approach between organisms and machines has long been examined by Norbert Wiener’s cybernetics theory in terms of its systemic aspects in art-theoretical analysis, but the introduction of more scientific procedures such as genetic modification and tissue culture, and the reconstruction of biology based on information concepts such as synthetic biology, have also been seen in bio-art. expanded the development of its expression in Bioart as well. This paper examines the interface between informatics, life sciences and artistic expression in Bioart and the expression that emerges at the interface between life and information, particularly (in the broadest sense) bioinformatics, based on an analysis of Louis Bec’s computer graphics work in the 1990s and in the field of artificial life. The paper examines the representations that emerge at the interface between life and information.

View full abstract

In exhibitionary spaces in modern and contemporary art institutions, the essences of artworks have often not been transmitted as they were intended by artists, but rather manipulated and controlled by the art institutions, influenced by their internal and external politics. This thesis thusly considers how the role of curators needs to be as a hinge between artists and museums from the cases of the Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Firstly it examines artists’ exploration into the power structures of modern and contemporary art museums, which premise to serve the public. After revealing the relationship between artists and museums, and the institutional politics behind their decisions, this thesis introduces the counter-art movement against such forces from the 1960s, institutional critique. Although institutional critique pointed out through a variety of artworks that artists were being overshadowed by art institutions, it led to the conclusion that a museum can even accommodate its own criticism within its very political structure. This would distinguish the voices of artists from those of institutions in exhibition creation, allowing artists to transparently express their own thoughts to the public while being offered necessary support and resources from museums.

View full abstract

Natsume Soseki (1867-1916), the author of I am a Cat, wrote at the beginning of his only art critique,Bunten and the Arts, that “Art is the beginning of my expression, the end of my expression.” in 1912. Since that time, Soseki showed leniency towards young painters who were rejected by the Bunten exhibition and a sharp eye towards the works of painters who have returned from studies in Europe and the United States. Born in Kyoto, Yasui Sotaro (1888-1955) learned Western-style painting in Kyoto, and moved to France in 1907, where he influenced by Cézanne, El Greco and other contemporary artists in Europe. World War I in 1914, he returned to Japan, made his debut with solo exhibition at the site of the 2nd Nika exhibition in 1915. Soseki purchased Yasui’s painting Village at the Foot of the Mountain, a landscape he had painted in Vétheuil in France at that solo exhibition, and Soseki displayed it in the guest room of his home (Soseki Sanbo). In this guest room the young people of Soseki’s private literary circle, the “Thursday Meeting (Mokuyo-kai)” gathered. In this paper, I introduce the support of Soseki, and the Thursday Meeting members, Tsuda Seifu and Komiya Toyotaka and the reaction to the Yasui’s solo exhibition.

View full abstract

This paper is a practical report of art archives based on a survey of belongings left by media artist Katsuhiro Yamaguchi upon his death. From around 2011, we authors were directly tasked by Yamaguchi to support his creative activities. Since Yamaguchi’s death in 2018, we has been working on organizing and listing his belongings in response to the wishes of the bereaved family. The artwork of Shimei, a magazine of arts and culture discovered among these belongings, serves as an important pointer for the objective analysis of Yamaguchi’s artistic activities in his last years. In this study, 50 works published in the magazine were interpreted from a unique perspective, and a database was created while collating it with the original drawings as necessary. In addition, two online exhibitions were planned in order to feed these findings back to society. The process of dealing with this archive, from digitization to publication, also serves as an opportunity to discover creative seeds among this group of disparate belongings. In addition, the nature of web media transforms this body of work into a more accessible entity.

View full abstract

In July 2022, a workshop and exhibition on SDG Goal 13 “Climate Change” was held in the East Annex. Students and students from integrated schools participated in the activities, using the “open space” created by KeMCo as a learning space for lectures, making things, viewing real objects, and reflecting on the experience. All of these activities included activities to give form to their own sensibilities through dialogue and co-speaking. It is said that it is future generations that will face the problem of climate change. In order to tackle this problem, sustainable education for future generations is essential. By sharing the “question” that is the challenge, creative activities will be conducted to find the answer that has no “right” answer. This is the kind of learning practiced in “vacant lots. Even in these activities, the dialogue and co-speaking among the multi-generational participants provided insights for a shift in values. This paper reports an example of how the “vacant land” created by KeMCo became an educational environment for creating and practicing sustainable learning.

View full abstract

Keio University’s project to support young researchers, ‘Nurturing of doctoral students who will map the grand design for future society’, offers a core program called ‘Art/Design/Communication’ to 260 second-semester doctoral students from 13 graduate schools across the university. Art, design and fieldwork programs were offered to graduate students from different specializations. The aims, overview and results of each program are documented and reported.

View full abstract

This paper reports on a practice-based study, documents the process of developing new approaches in designing a digital archive through a human-centered approach. The digital archiving platform is named Keio Object Hub, which provides a comprehensive overview of Keio University's art and culture. A platform that aggregates Keio’s objects, collections, exhibition, as well as creations, and further foster exchanges within the university network. Nevertheless, there are multiple ways to ‘open’ cultural heritage objects in the digital realm, however, the aim of this paper is to explore the practices and experiences we have learned from the development and implementation of the platform—with special focus on conducting a series of workshops—and further clarify the fundamental framework of how the stakeholders in university museums can cultivate their mindset that can support and facilitate encounters and interactions across the academic-public sphere.

View full abstract