Record of the International Symposium for the 20th Anniversary of the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum:
Why Are Photography Museums Necessary?

Discussion
Panelists

Sandra Phillips
Emeritus Curator at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, U.S.

Filippo Maggia
Director at Fondazione Fotografia Modena, Italy

Kim Sunhee
Former Director at Daegu Art Museum, South Korea

Judy Annear
Former Senior Curator at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia

Gu Zheng
Photographer and Professor at Fudan University, China
Chairperson

Michiko Kasahara
Chief Curator at Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, Japan

Record of the International Symposium for the 20th
Anniversary of the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum:

Why Are Photography Museums Necessary?
Discussion
Panelists

Sandra Phillips
Filippo Maggia
Kim Sunhee
Judy Annear
Gu Zheng
Chairperson Michiko Kasahara
Michiko Kasahara (MK): Alright, let’s reopen the symposium. Thank you
to so many of you for staying with us all the way to the end. I don’t think we
can sum up or show the way to any conclusions here, as this wasn’t our aim
from the start. Hopefully it’s given you something to think about. We’ve heard
various things about the state of photography museums and collections all
across the world, so now I’d like to ask our panelists some questions, and then
we’ll open it up to questions from the audience.
Tokyo Photographic Art Museum (TOP) reopened this year on September
3rd, after closing for a little under two years for major renovation work.
When you say “renovations” there’s a tendency to assume everyone’s justbeen on vacation for the two years but we’ve been guest speaking at schooloutreach programs, for example, as well as continuously collecting work. One
thing that we put a lot of energy into as an important project was assembling
the archive stretching across the 25 years of TOP to make an anniversary
publication. We’re selling it now but it stretches over 500 pages, so given thatit’s quite expensive I suggest looking at it at the library. And if you work at a
public museum or library, I’ll let you have a copy so you can use it as resource.
There were several reasons we worked so hard on this anniversary publication.
Of course there’s the ordinary sense — although it’s only been 25 years, if we
don’t go on ahead and put this together now various materials will end up
vanishing like the mist, a variety of records will end up disappearing. And
it would be troubling if these records disappeared because as a specializedmuseum, TOP is the first institution of its kind in Japan, so the fact remainsthat TOP’s history exists as the single field within a history with respect
to which we may speak of “Japanese photography.” I’m not saying this isnecessarily a good or bad thing, but the fact remains that we only have a single
history. So in any event we felt we had to make sure to preserve it properly.
And then being the one and only photography museum presents a difficulty.
What should we exhibit, what kind of exhibitions should we hold, and whatshould we buy? Well, of course we’ve had fundamental policies in place fromthe start, so it’s only natural to follow them, but within these terms, specifically114

what kind of exhibition, whose exhibition will we do, whose exhibition won’t
we do, what should we collect — this is what all of us associated with TOP
have been trying to figure out for these 25 years.
What I thought after listening to the presentations of each panelist was that
there really are both similarities and differences between the situation in Asia,
including Japan, and that in Europe. For instance, when it comes to Europe
there’s a photography department in every museum, and in America there arevarious museums with photography departments, such as the San Francisco
Museum of Modern Art, New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and theMuseum of Fine Arts, Boston. I think there’s quite a big difference between
a situation where an institution can put together an exhibition based on, say,John Szarkowski’s perspective toward photography and also an exhibition
that counters his views, compared to the situation in Japan where we stillmust make the fundamental inquiry “what is photography in art museums?”
I would venture to say that this challenge we face is something we’ve all been
constantly thinking about.
Filippo’s video was really interesting, but then one reason it was so interestingis that we have an historical perspective and a language in common acrossthese fields called history, photographic history, art theory, and so on —“we” meaning all us specialists here who have been furnished with a standardof shared education and shared experiences by so-called photography andcontemporary art. If we watch Filippo’s video from this perspective, we canreally understand the selections he made — for the Japanese artists, Yasumasa
Morimura, Daido Moriyama, Hiroshi Sugimoto. Curators use a certain
standardized global language, even while doing local work in certain specificlocal places. On the other hand, however, we then have the problem of how to115

win over the average crowd when we’re working in these local spaces. And one
more problem in this regard is that photography straddles an extraordinarily
large number of fields. TOP deals with photographic works of art, but this “art”
itself is also extraordinarily broad. We also have a situation where, because
we’re the “photography museum,” people from every single photographic
field just come knocking at our doors. At that time, as I said before, there’s
the question of what we deal with, what we do not deal with; the conflict
between global and local languages — perhaps if we used words that were justa little bit easier to understand, we could take a populist bent, or otherwise we
could do only specialized work. The conflict here is that there is a difference instandard, which I think is inevitably going to be an issue on some level in any
museum or university. This is the basis upon which I’ve been thinking while
listening to the presentations of each panelist.
It’s been 20 years since TOP’s establishment, but we’re really groping aroundfor how we’re going to move ahead in the 20 years to follow. We want tobe open to various things, but at the same time we don’t want to be an
embarrassment as a specialized museum, and it would be great if these twocourses of action were in agreement with each other, but the problem is that
there are cases in which they are not. So I’d like to hear from each of you
individually now on this point. We held an exhibition of Hiroshi Sugimoto
for TOP’s reopening. The LOST HUMAN GENETIC ARCHIVE exhibition
boasted of 67 thousand visitors, far more than we had imagined. With things
in Japan being what they are, where 20 thousand visitors to a contemporary
art or contemporary photography exhibition is considered a great turnout,
67 thousand people is an outrageous number. However, besides the extremely
favorable reactions there were some questions about whether his work was
actually photography or if it was just contemporary art. And it is just thesepast 30 years or so that contemporary art and photography have come thisclose together. Even if you don’t see the two as being entirely equivalent, there
are an extremely large number of overlapping areas. Well, from my point ofview, whether something comes directly from photography or contemporary
art is of little importance — if it’s good, it’s good. On the other hand, ofcourse it does irritate me at times to see exhibitions by contemporary art
curators who handle photographic works without paying any attention to thehistory of photography. I do know I’m being extraordinarily selfish by saying
so. On that note, I’d like to ask Judy about what aspects of photography
she deals with at contemporary art museums, such as the problem of therelationship between contemporary art and photography, photography and socalled commercial photography.
Judy Annear (JA): The boundary between art and photography is evermoving. I think of the two as being intimately entwined, because I see thehistorical relationship as continuously evolving, but never really definite.
Of course, it’s easy for people to dismiss certain aspects of photography as
either “amateur” or “commercial,” and put “art photography” in a completely

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separate bag, but the relationship is always rather slippery. I mean for mypart, for the 20 years that I was a photography curator at the Art Galleryof New South Wales, I tended to avoid people whose work was primarily“commercial” — in the sense that they mainly worked in a particularlycommercial photographic arena. It was a very arbitrary decision based on anumber of things to do with just sheer volume, really. And I had to make a
lot of decisions like that — concerning scale, and also concerning finances aswell. So in this context I tended to be quite specific about artists working withphotography, but my actual position is much more generous then that. I thinkpolicy is important for a curator at any institution, but policy also needs tobe continually reassessed in light of the shifts that artists — and in particulartheoreticians and historians — may be proposing. And also the shape of thecollection that a museum is building. You look at where it has come from,you look at its strengths, and then you have to start making decisions about
whether you’re going to play to those strengths and weaknesses — but ofcourse I’m generalizing wildly and not really answering the question, because I
don’t think there’s an easy answer to it.
MK: And what do you think, Sandra?
Sandra Phillips (SP): I think it’s really important to remember that before
we talk about whether photographs are art or can be art, or whatever they
can be, we have to remember that photography is a technology. I think thiswas what Judy was saying, but I’ll say it again in my own way. It’s a verylarge field — it’s like a language in a way — so the curator has to make thesedecisions about what goes in the shows and what gets in the collection. Of
course it’s a huge, overwhelming job, but I think it’s really interesting. I think
the important thing is to keep these questions open. To be very concise —probably to be irresponsibly open (laughs).

MK: I love the part about irresponsibility. So now I’d like to hear from Filippo— you know I went to Modena last year, and the scope of the collection
they’ve constructed at the Fondazione Fotografia is also enormous, but, as
he’s shown us today, for research he’s visited not only Japan but the entire
world, making exhibitions and collections. They really have an insanely vast
collection of contemporary photography. And as for my question — I spoke
earlier of the local and the global, and although what you have is amazing
as this global contemporary photography collection, what do the Italianaudiences and executives think of you spending money on global artists rather
than Italian artists, with the funds coming from the bank in this tiny Italian
town of Modena? And not just money, but devoting a whole section of thecollection to said artists?
Filippo Maggia (FM): When we decided to build a collection in Modena, thefirst problem was how we were going to be able to communicate our choice to117

collect photography, because it was quite strange — there are no photography
departments in Italian contemporary museums, not one. There was one at
the beginning of the Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea when
Antonella Russo was working there over 20 years ago, but they stopped.
So it was very challenging for the Modena Foundation to decide to collectphotographs — especially as we were focusing on very, very contemporary
artists, and not only on photography but also enlarging our research tothe broader field of images including video works, installations, drawings,
animation, and so on.
Honestly speaking, I never paid attention to the question, in Modena or in
Italy, of whether our audience could understand the project or not, because it
was something we wanted to do for future generations. Since this is the firststep, we thought we just had to do it. As you know, Italy has so many things
it needs to preserve, photography is probably the last problem on anyone’s
minds (laughs).
Anyway, we’ve been very lucky because our former President and board
decided to follow through on this project not just as an investment or because
it was something different to do, but first of all because they came from theacademic field so they understand that if you want this to become something
you need time. You cannot bet on what will be the phenomenon of today or
tomorrow. You need time. And you need time also to teach and to grow up
with new artists — young artists, not only from Italy, but also from abroad.
For us, the Master course is important because it’s a way to invite artists fromall over the world, so we can have a mix of experiences.
Anyway, I think that the question of the border between contemporary andmodern collections is not the issue. For example, when we decided to collect
American photography, I immediately understood that it was impossible
to buy from the US. It was too difficult and too expensive, so we decided
to divide the purchases into two periods — we’d start with the ’50s-’80s,
and then when we had enough money, we would continue on to buy
contemporary works (laughs). It’s the same in Germany, for example. If you
want to buy Andreas Gursky’s work today it’s quite impossible.
MK: Even in Japan, we’ve been talking about the however many hundreds ofart museums that have been constructed in China since the beginning of the’00s. However, I’ve also heard there’s been a bit of a conflict, as this museum
construction period has overlapped with the extreme rise in market value ofChinese contemporary photography and contemporary art. One often hears
that the number of professional curators can’t catch up, and in any event
this is an issue all over Asia, including Japan. So Gu, what are your thoughts
around all of this?
Gu Zheng (GZ): There was previously a governmental cultural policy in118

China where public museums had to rent out their exhibition spaces on
their own in order to earn the money to run the museum. For some time
this cultural policy carried a lot of weight for the management of the art
museums. So many exhibitions are opened to try to bring in a lot of funds,
because the museum management’s side is running to make a profit in order
to cover things like the staff ’s salaries. For instance, there isn’t really any
budget dedicated to collecting works within the costs for the year. So we put
everything into these short-term operations. So for these museums, up until
now, we have a situation where there’s really no plan at all when it comes tocollecting works. Recently this has been improved a little. That is, no longer
opening exhibitions in order to better the administrative situation on yourown — when it’s like this in your country, your museums practically aren’teven museums, which is not a great situation in the long term.
So in respect to costs — I’m sure everyone is well aware of this, but China hasmore money than it used to. So now the costs are largely being subsidized,
but previously we had the aformentioned situation. On the other hand,
there are also a lot of private art museums, but I really haven’t met anyone
running private museums really for the sake of pure art. When it comes totheir policies, they’re generally focused on whether the value of what they’repurchasing and collecting will go up in the near future. So for most of thosepeople in China, photography is generally not even coming into their line ofsight. As far as the current situation surrounding public and private museums
goes, I don’t think we’ll be seeing an improvement in the near future in regards
to photography’s collection or research.
MK: We heard from Filippo that his board members and the people fromthe government are very understanding in regards to a highly international
collection, as well as very supportive toward research on and exhibitions ofinternational and young artists. Kim, you’re presently heading a museum, andyou’ve had many experiences at institutions like the Daegu Art Museum, andthen in China and at the Mori Art Museum, so I’d love if you could touch on
this talk concerning globalism and local artists.
Sunhee Kim (SK): What I’d like to talk about as a curator from Asia is thesituation in Asian art museums. There are a lot of things happening in Asia
right now, so I’d like to push the conversation in that direction. It’s alreadybeen 25 years since the preparations began for TOP, and now it’s had 20 yearsof amazing operation. It’s globally renown as a great art museum amongst
photography museums. I personally think it’s probably thanks to this thatJapanese artists are well-known worldwide. TOP is doing so many versatile
things these days, so if we were to make a big photography museum in Korea
now, I truly believe TOP would be a great model to base it on.
With that said, however, aren’t we a bit weak when it comes to photography,
if you compare us to Europe or America? This is how I’ve been seeing things,

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anyway. For example, if you’re talking about noted photographers it’s Hiroshi
Sugimoto, Andreas Gursky, Cindy Sherman, Yang Fudong, Yeondoo Jung —these famous photographers are accepted no matter where you go. You can
see their work in photography museums, and they’re often shown as well inart museums that handle the broader field of art, it’s pretty invariable. But
we really aren’t capable of discovering new photographers, or young, genius
photographers fixated on particular themes or means of expression.
I personally think China’s photography is weak compared to other media.
Perhaps weak isn’t the right word — there aren’t as many photographers there,
compared to artists in other media. The number is just smaller compared toartists working with painting, sculpture, or things like installation. And it
probably used to be the same in Korea. Now anyone can take photos with
their cellphones, but say 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago, the photo artists in Korea
were really just the people who had the money for it. Though things havechanged, even now if you want to take really good photographs the equipment
and production costs do add up, it’s still quite tough. So I’m holding myself,
too, to a certain standard from now on to make sure to put young artists into
exhibitions I work on.
And I do have one request for TOP. While you’ve been doing a great deal ofwork with Europe and America, shouldn’t it be Asia from now on? Somethingis changing in various Asian countries, including Korea and China, that havestarted to become involved with art. Since TOP has been leading the way
until now, take more responsibility (laughs). It’d be great if you’d help us out
by, for instance, showing good work from Asia. I mean, you just haven’t really
had too much of this kind of cooperative effort with Asia.
MK: While I really don’t think we’ve been leading the way, it is true thatin the 1990s, when TOP initially opened — as well as in the ’80s, when I
came back from studying photography at an American university — it wasn’t
just TOP, but a considerable number of museums in Japan were all looking
exclusively toward America or Europe, that’s certainly true. However, since
the latter half of the ’90s or around when the money ran out and after the
new millennium our attention has shifted significantly toward Asia. TOP
is opening an exhibition of Thailand’s Apichatpong Weerasethakul from
December 13th, and we often feature Asian artists in the Yebisu International
Festival for Art & Alternative Visions. There are Asian artists in the lineup
for exhibitions as of the next year as well, which would have been largely
Americans or Europeans if we were still in the ’90s.
After the first seven or eight years of the 2000s, I feel that various
manifestations of the medium of photography have been put into use as many
cultural resources, given the contemporary art or contemporary photographybiennales within Asia. There’s the Daegu Photo Biennale, the Gwangju
Biennale, Pusan, not to mention the Beijing International Art Biennale,120

various art fairs — Hong Kong just built a huge art museum, Thailand has
also started a photography biennale in Bangkok as of last year, Singapore isalso starting one, and India will from January at Kochi, and so on. It’s really
evident that Asia’s fever for photography is now very much on the rise.
SP: I just wanted to add one thing here. TOP is a very important museum
internationally, because there is a real culture of photography in Japan,
and this museum has responded to it. Japan has been producing amazing
photographs since the beginning of photography, really —­­especially since thewar, when the country invested in its photographic industries. So that’s why
this museum has been a leader here.
MK: Actually, we had no choice but to make an art museum dedicatedto photography. Or to put it otherwise, one might say that if many otherart museums had had departments dedicated to photography, there would
have been no TOP. We wouldn’t have needed a photography museum if
every museum across Japan had a photography department, a photographycollection, a specialized curator, holding these exhibitions for us — so one
does also feel it would have been alright if it had turned out that way. There
are difficulties that one encounters precisely by dint of being a specializedmuseum. We’re going a little over time, so I’d like to take a few questions here.
Q: Thank you. I’m from Singapore. I’m going to ask about literacy, viewer
literacy. It’s not the question of whether or not photography museums arenecessary — I mean, certainly in my opinion, I think they definitely arenecessary, and in regards to your point Sandra, you were saying that they keep
us honest and also, in a way, are very democratic.
But when I asked a friend of mine in Singapore on what he would consider
museums to be doing — what he would consider to be the purpose of
museums, and what good art is — he basically said to me, well, it’s the art
itself that’s made the difference. One can see how photography and the works
that you present in museums actually influence opinions and also influenceother artists. So, I think my question around literacy concerns the fact that forpeople like us — and it seems like for many others — it’s kind of hard to tellwhat good photography is and what the different kinds of photography are.
So we look to museums to educate us on how to see what photography reallyconsists of. I think all of us understand photographs; we have lots of them athome. But to buy photography, and use it as art, and put it on our walls, andto really have that sense of evaluating the medium — that’s something entirely
different. So now that all of you have had many years of experience, including
experience with contemporary art, and you’ve seen what is happening with
contemporary art in museums — what would you not do? Not what would
you do, but what would you not do in a photography museum going forwardthat might be a problem in contemporary art today?

121SK: That’s a really hard question. I often work on exhibitions related tophotography, but I have a somewhat different perspective from the curators
who specialize in it. Photography is a very important medium withincontemporary art. Photography is really vast and deep, and there are still newmeans of expression frequently emerging, so, and it’s hard to say this in justa few words, but when you see good work, it’s certainly different, spiritually
speaking and also in terms of it’s inspirational factor, compared to thoselacking in these aspects. So when it comes down to buying a photograph ornot, of course it’s really a matter of taste, of likes and dislikes, and with all ofthat it’s difficult to explain anything clearly in relation to this point, but since
the world of photography has various means of expression and things to takenotice of, maybe you should think about it along those lines?
JA: In terms of what I would not do in a public institution, I would not severa medium from its history and context. If you do that, then you’ve just got
something floating around — and no wonder it would be difficult for people
to understand or find a “way in” to what they’re looking at. And to be frank,
I see a lot of that happening in the contemporary art world, and I think tosome extent it has probably always happened. I mean, fashion intervenes, if
you like. But as soon as you sever something from where it’s come from, you
are lost, quite simply.
SP: I agree totally with Judy. As she said, there is a lot going on incontemporary photography, because it’s suddenly become very fashionable,
and the prices have accelerated — and no wonder you’re confused. Many,
many people are. I think the easiest way to start, first of all, is to see a lot, andto see a lot of diverse material, not just in Asia, but all over. And also to try to
see what is particular to photography as a medium. I think that’s a good guide.
If you make pictures that challenge the limits of photography, or approachsomething we call contemporary painting and sculpture, that’s interesting, but
it can be deeply fashionable and therefore forgettable in a number of years.
MK: I think my answer will be about the same. While taking history,
photographic history, art history into account, each museum has its own
collection policy, as well as institutional aims governing why a certain
exhibition is being held when it is, as well as why a certain artist’s work ispurchased. As TOP is a public museum, all of the donations and corporate
sponsorship account for about half of our exhibitions, and we run thecollection on subsidies from the city of Tokyo. But as it is a public museum wehave to be extremely cautious about how we’re going to make our purchasesor the exhibitions we’re going to hold. For that there’s the expertise from eachof our curators, with their respective fields of specialization, and additionally
there was a committee set up for these experts’ proposals, which, on top of
taking in opinions, holds a roundtable conference for journalists before andafter exhibitions, as well as directly after collection purchases. I can’t believe
I’m really disclosing all of this right now, I’m giving you everything — this is122more information than probably any museum in Japan has ever made public.
We only have five minutes left, so I’d like to end this symposium with a wordfrom each of you.
GZ: As Sandra mentioned earlier, TOP’s present status and influence havedeveloped from the strong spirit of the photography culture in Japan. So, as
Kim also mentioned, I’m hoping to look forward to more introductions ofphotography from various countries in Asia, as well as your continued workwith Europe.
SK: I feel the same way. TOP’s activities until now have been amazing, and it’s
thanks to Michiko Kasahara that it’s become this amazing museum. However,I’d be grateful if they continued to push it even farther from now on. It’s really
tough to make a museum — certainly when looking at it as someone likemyself, coming from the museum side of things. There’s a lot of stuff to worry
about for one, and then there are times when you just get really exhausted
and fed up with all these voices and opposing opinions coming at you while
you’re killing yourself doing all this. So while you need TOP’s competence anddynamism in order to make a photography museum that’s good for everyone,
they also really need backing and support from all of you.
FM: Well, I suppose when I met Michiko Kasahara for the first time — moreor less 20 years ago during my first trip to Japan — I immediately recognizeda very strong passion for photography. This museum is probably her house.
TOP is a fantastic place for Japanese photography — as Sandra said before,
Japanese photography has had a very long history, a very long tradition,and very good photographers. And what they’ve been doing here for years is
supporting younger generations, which is fantastic. So please continue.
SP: How can I add to that (laughs)? This museum has been an integral partof the culture of photography, so it’s an institution I admire. And I think it isadmired very much by the world outside of Japan, so they are doing a lot right.
JA: Yes, I agree, absolutely. I couldn’t have done the projects I’ve donewith Japanese photography without the assistance of this museum. Thosepublications from its early years on the history of Japanese photography werecrucial for someone like me to learn about how photography evolved in thiscountry. I relish seeing the exhibitions here. I am so glad that the museum has
now reopened, and I hope it continues to excavate and to present the diversityof contemporary photography within its elegant confines.
MK: And with that, thank you to the audience members that stuck aroundwith us for these five hours, as well as to all the panelists. We’ll end things
here. Thank you very much.
( English Editing & Translation: Lillian Canright [Art Translators Collective])123