A collaborative project by Parasophia & Future Beauty

Parasophia: Kyoto International Festival of Contemporary Culture 2015 is scheduled to be held at two museums as its main venues: the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art and the Museum of Kyoto.  As part of our process of working toward the exhibition in the Spring of 2015, the Parasophia Office will invite our Professional Advisory Board member Chris Dercon (Director, Tate Modern) to deliver a lecture as a contribution to our research on the activities and perspectives of one of the most cutting-edge art museums in the world.

Tate’s long history begins in 1897, with a small collection of British art. Today it is composed of four major sites: Tate Modern, Tate Britain, Tate Liverpool, and Tate St. Ives.  Tate Modern is a museum of international modern and contemporary art, located in London.  The plan for its creation was announced in 1992, and following a conversion of the former Bankside Power Station into gallery by Swiss architects Herzog & De Meuron, the museum was opened in May 2000.  Nearly a decade later, Tate Modern began “The Tate Modern Project” to develop the museum further, adding a new building to the south of the current building.  Chris Dercon became the Director of Tate Modern in April 2011.  Dercon is also well known as a curator whose activities reach across the globe.  At this lecture, he will speak about the new vision and strategy of Tate Modern as its present Director.

Before being appointed as the Director of Tate Modern, Dercon was the Director of Haus der Kunst in Munich.  During his time at Haus der Kunst, he co-curated the 2011 Munich version of Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion with Akiko Fukai, the Chief Curator of the Kyoto Costume Institute.  The exhibition opened at the Barbican Art Gallery in 2010 and traveled in five cities around the world.  On March 21, 2014, a renewed version of the exhibition will open at the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, with the title Future Beauty: The Tradition of Reinvention in Japanese Fashion.  This Open Research Program is presented in collaboration with the Kyoto Costume Institute and the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, the organizers of this exhibition.

Tate Modern: www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-modern
The Kyoto Costume Institute: www.kci.or.jp
The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto: www.momak.go.jp/English

Admission:

Free (no reservation required)

Maximum capacity:

150 seats (numbered tickets distributed at the Information Desk from 5:00PM)

Language:

English (with consecutive interpretation into Japanese)

Venue:

1F Lobby, The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto
Okazaki Enshoji-cho, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8344
Kyoto City Bus and other buses: Kyoto Kaikan Bijutsukan-mae
10 min. walk from Higashiyama Station, Kyoto Municipal Subway Tozai Line (Station T10)
www.momak.go.jp/English

Presented by:

Parasophia: Kyoto International Festival of Contemporary Culture 2015; The Kyoto Costume Institute; The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto

Related exhibition:

Future Beauty: The Tradition of Reinvention in Japanese Fashion
The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto
Friday (holiday), March 21 – Sunday, May 11, 2014
Organizer: The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto; The Kyoto Costume Institute
Support: Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry; Kyoto Prefecture; Kyoto Prefectural Board of Education; Kyoto City; Kyoto Municipal Board of Education; Kyoto City Museum Association; Kyoto Chamber of Commerce and Industry; Japan Apparel Fashion Industry Council; Nihon Body Fashion Association
Special cooperation: Wacoal Holdings Corp.
Cooperation: Nanasai Co., Ltd.; Yoshichu Mannequin Co., Ltd.
www.momak.go.jp/English/exhibitionArchive/2013/401.html

Parasophia: Kyoto International Festival of Contemporary Culture 2015 is scheduled to be held at two museums as its main venues: the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art and the Museum of Kyoto. As part of our process of working toward the exhibition in the Spring of 2015, we have invited our Professional Advisory Board member Chris Dercon (Director, Tate Modern) to deliver a lecture as a contribution to our research on the activities and perspectives of one of the most cutting-edge art museums in the world.
Before being appointed as the Director of Tate Modern, Dercon was the Director of Haus der Kunst in Munich. During his time at Haus der Kunst, he co-curated the 2011 Munich version of Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion with Akiko Fukai, the Chief Curator of the Kyoto Costume Institute. The exhibition opened at the Barbican Art Gallery in 2010 and traveled in five cities around the world. On March 21, 2014, a renewed version of the exhibition opened at the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, with the title Future Beauty: The Tradition of Reinvention in Japanese Fashion. This Open Research Program was presented in collaboration with the Kyoto Costume Institute and the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, the organizers of this exhibition.
Dercon, who is the director of the British national museum that has more visitors than any other museum in the world, at 5.3 million visitors per year, began his lecture with an acknowledgment of his twenty-year relationship with the city of Kyoto, which has involved the production of a documentary film and the co-curation of several exhibitions, and a brief overview of Tate Modern’s programming in recent years that formed a link with Japan through Japanese contemporary art and photography. He described the qualitative changes seen in the museum’s visitors in recent years, who are increasingly finding their own reasons for visiting, and compared these changes with those taking place in the organizational model of museums and other cultural institutions, which are gradually shifting from a vertical model to a less hierarchical one that is distributed more horizontally. A key aspect of these changes, according to Dercon, is the idea of “cultural participation,” an indispensable part of contemporary society that transcends the borders set by art genres and museums. With Olafur Eliasson’s The Weather Project (2003) in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall as an example, Dercon described his vision of the new museum, where visitors not only take part in art appreciation, but also move beyond the official programming to redefine the museum as a place for discussion about issues related to their own daily lives. Dercon’s vision was highly evocative not only in the context of museums, but also in terms of the conception and function of new international exhibitions of contemporary art. His museum’s motto of asking questions that Google cannot answer seemed to resonate particularly strongly with the audience, providing a renewed outlook on the bright future of museums as led by Tate Modern.
250 audience members were present for this lecture. The lecture was documented through video and photography by three students from the Kyoto University of Art and Design, and the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto. Four students from Doshisha University and Osaka University also provided their assistance. A record of the lecture will be made available on this website.

(Photos by Rokuto Nonoshita [above] and Yuki Yoneda [below])

Open Research Program 07 [Lecture] Chris Dercon “Art + Architecture for the XXI Century: Tate Modern”
A collaborative project by Parasophia & Future Beauty
Date: Friday, April 4, 2014  7:00–8:30 PM
Venue: 1F Lobby, The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto
Presented by Parasophia: Kyoto International Festival of Contemporary Culture 2015; The Kyoto Costume Institute; and The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto

More information

About the Open Research Program
The Artistic Director and his curatorial team will conduct part of their research for Parasophia: Kyoto International Festival of Contemporary Culture 2015 (scheduled for early March–early May, 2015) publicly, in the form of lectures and other events in this program.

About the Professional Advisory Board
The Professional Advisory Board consists of professionals who provide advice and support to the Artistic Director.