Ateneum Art Museum/Finnish National Gallery ✕ DNP Museum Lab
related symposium

Museums and Well-Being:
From the perspective of the possibilities ofart appreciation

Proceedings

Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd. DNP Museum Lab

0

Ateneum Art Museum/Finnish National Gallery×DNP Museum Lab
related symposium “Museums and Well-Being: From the Perspective of
the Possibilities of Art Appreciation” - Report
Foreword ・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・ 2
Program ・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・ 3
Overview ・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・ 4

PrefaceDr. Susanna Pettersson,
Director, Ateneum Art Museum/Finnish National Gallery ・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・ 8

Speaker profiles ・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・ 10
Speeches“Museums and the Future” by Dr. Susanna Pettersson, Director,
Ateneum Art Museum/Finnish National Gallery ・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・ 12“New learning at the museum” by Ms. Satu Itkonen, Head of public
programs, Ateneum Art Museum/Finnish National Gallery ・・・・・・・・・・・・・ 17“Museums and collections” by Ms. Atsuko Yamaguchi,
Assistant Curator, Museum of Modern Ceramic Art, Gifu ・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・ 22“Art appreciation and the human brain: neural and psychologicalresponses in aesthetic experiences”
by Mr. Hideaki Kawabata, Associate Professor, Keio University ・・・・・・・・・ 28“The power of art, as seen from hands-on social welfare experience”
by Mr. Taizo Oshiro, Associate professor, Tohoku Fukushi University ・・・・ 34“How multimedia systems work for art appreciation”
by Ms. Mina Tanaka, Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd. ・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・ 38

Panel discussion ・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・・ 43

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Ateneum Art Museum/Finnish National Gallery×DNP Museum Lab related symposium“Museums and Well-Being:
From the Perspective of the Possibilities of Art Appreciation”- Report■Organized by: Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd. DNP Museum Lab
Ateneum Art Museum/Finnish National Gallery■Supported by: Embassy of Finland, Tokyo
The Finnish Institute in Japan■Collaborating partner: S2 Corporation■Date:

Nov. 2, 2016(Wed.) /14:00-17:30■Venue: DNP Gotanda Building Hall
Foreword
Dai Nippon Printing launched the DNP Museum Lab in 2006 to enhance the technicalfacilities of museums. This initiative now provides museums with highly-accessible
systems that use digital technology to enrich people’s appreciation of culture and the arts.
DNP Museum Lab’s first partnership was with the Louvre Museum, where theycollaborated in the research and development of multimedia systems that could provide
background information to enhance understanding and appreciation of the museum’s
works of art, including functionality for people of diverse cultures and languages. Some of
the multimedia tools produced by the collaboration are still used by the museum today.
Moreover, the project was highly regarded by professionals worldwide, as a pioneering
application of interactive systems to support visitors’ appreciation of art.
We then collaborated with the French National Library (BnF) to digitalize a selectionof the library’s valuable collection of terrestrial globes and celestial spheres in highresolution 3D. The resulting 3D data were made available to the public via BnF’s digital
library, Gallica, greatly enhancing access to these resources.
The aim of our new project with the Finnish National Gallery/Ateneum Art Museum
is to explore the essence of art viewing in greater depth, investigating the correlation
between art viewing and the human brain so as to develop an art appreciation programthat realizes the positive effects of viewing art. We hope to use the output from this projectas an action model for implementing such programs in Finland and Japan, bringing
positive benefits for the ageing society of both countries.

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The Ateneum and DNP have already worked together to develop a multimedia
presentation system for art works by Helene Schjerfbeck, Finland’s highly popularnational artist. The system was utilized in an exhibition of Schjerfbeck’s works thattraveled to four venues in Japan in 2015. With the opening of the Ateneum’s new displayof its collection in March 2016, it has become a permanent part of the exhibition in
Helsinki. The symposium theme of “Museums and Well-being” takes a deeper look at
issues touched upon by an earlier symposium, held to coincide with the launch of the newcollection. Concern for well-being is a megatrend for society as a whole, so we plan to takethis theme further by focusing on the question of how an art museum can contribute,launching a new project on “art appreciation and well-being.”
The cross-disciplinary dialogue facilitated by the symposium includes discussions of
how people interact with the museum and its collections, of art appreciation and brain
mechanisms, and of the use of art in a welfare context. I hope that it will provide a large
audience with a valuable opportunity to reflect deeply on art appreciation and well-being.

Program

Greetings by host （14：00-14：10）
Motoharu Kitajima, Managing Director, Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd.



Speeches （14：10-16：10）“Museums and the Future”
by Dr. Susanna Pettersson, Director, Ateneum Art Museum/Finnish National Gallery“New learning at the museum”
by Ms. Satu Itkonen,
Head of public programs, Ateneum Art Museum/Finnish National Gallery“Museums and collections”
by Ms. Atsuko Yamaguchi, Assistant Curator, Museum of Modern Ceramic Art, Gifu
“Art appreciation and the human brain: neural and psychological responses
in aesthetic experiences”
by Mr. Hideaki Kawabata, Associate Professor, Keio University“The power of art, as seen from hands-on social welfare experience”
by Mr. Taizo Oshiro, Associate professor, Tohoku Fukushi University“How multimedia systems work for art appreciation”
by Ms. Mina Tanaka, Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd.


Panel discussion （16：30-17：30）

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Overview
This symposium was comprised of two parts: presentations and a panel discussion.
The first half consisted of six presentations. As well as introducing their own activities,
the presenters discussed their ideas regarding the role of art museums, ways of engaging
with artwork in contemporary society, the well-being acquired via art appreciation, art’s
power in the context of social welfare work, etc.
The panel discussion focused on two themes: (1) What is art appreciation? and (2) Do
art museums raise people’s level of well-being?

■Presentations
Susanna Pettersson, Director of the Ateneum Art Museum (Finnish National Gallery),first introduced the history and changing roles of art museums in Europe, and thentouched upon the raison-d’être of art museums today. She discussed how these “memoryorganizations” always need to offer new values for visitors and the community, whilegathering and researching cultural heritage. At the same time, in the context of ashrinking world, art museums today are authorized platforms for information, and it isimportant that they heighten the accessibility of their content, while cooperating withexternal institutions with specialized functions.
The next presenter, Satu Itkonen – Head of Public Programs at the Ateneum Art
Museum (Finnish National Gallery) – asserted that, as learning environments, artmuseums should be open to a diverse set of people, and discussed concrete examples ofsuch practice. She discussed the importance of developing viewing environments forvisitors, presenting them with information, and offering programs characterized by active
participation-based experiences. She also touched upon the effectiveness of guided tours
that make use of discussion-based VTS (visual thinking strategies). Itkonen thendescribed how, in the museum’s “Ateneum Live” program (which consists of debates
regarding cultural and societal issues) and its project for people with dementia, it is achallenge to devise ways to reach out to, and bring in, a variety of people. She concluded
by describing three values used by the Finnish National Gallery in its management:
togetherness, openness, and professionalism.
Atsuko Yamaguchi, an Assistant Curator at the Museum of Modern Ceramic Art, Gifu,
touched upon the foundation of her museum and its projects, and presented initiatives
that make use of its collections, collaborations with contemporary artists, and exhibitions

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carried out with the cooperation of other museums. She also pointed out the importanceof education in art appreciation, and discussed her museum’s gallery talks, parent-childart appreciation sessions, art appreciation for children making use of worksheets, andworkshops. She highlighted cases involving children being curious about art works,
thereby feeling closer to the museum.
Hideaki Kawabata, an Associate Professor at Keio University, carries out research on
art appreciation and brain function. He sees the former as an endeavor that contributes
to the brain’s well-being. Investigating how the brain functions when appreciating various
paintings, one can grasp the differences in brain activities that arise from sensations ofbeauty and ugliness. When one senses beauty, the brain’s reward system becomes active.
In this way, Kawabata said, beauty is a reward for the brain, and the experience ofappreciating art cultivates a foundation for experiencing well-being. However, he noted
that, when confronting a piece of art, the context and how one relates to it influence how
one feels beauty, and also presented multiple examples of related experiments. Based onthese studies and experiments, he asserted that various measures and initiatives in whichpeople experience beauty could be used to improve their well-being.
Taizo Oshiro, who is involved in clinical art research and practice in the field of social
welfare, stated that artistic activities are indispensable for alleviating dementia
symptoms and slowing the disease’s progression. Clinical art consists of three parts:
introduction, art production, and appreciation. In clinical art programs, creative activities
stimulate the five senses of people with dementia, and a clinical artist praising their works
in art appreciation sessions heightens their self-appreciation. Clinical art is also used insensitivity training for children and in adult mental health care. It appears highly likelythat participating in such programs can give people self-esteem and lead to a better QOL(quality of life).
As well as introducing the achievements of the DNP Museum Lab, which includes acollaborative project with the Louvre Museum, Mina Tanaka also discussed its work,
which examines the effects of multimedia-based interactive art appreciation. Based onbrainwave measurements, it was discovered that providing an interface through which
viewers can acquire information about an artwork heightens their interest in it, and thatinducing viewers’ sympathy stimulates their mirror neuron systems. She stated that, withsocieties growing older, the museum would like to develop effective art observation
mechanisms that contribute to mental health through intellectual stimulation anddialogues.

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■Panel Discussion
Atsuko Yamaguchi chaired the panel discussion, the first topic of which was “What is
art appreciation?” Satu Itkonen, of the Ateneum Art Museum, stated that, when peopleview an art work, they reflect upon themselves and confront the ideas and the artist—an
Other—behind it. Pettersson suggested that art appreciation shapes cultural identity,
leading to communication with others, the exchange of opinions, and inspiration.
Regarding this topic, Kawabata pointed out that art plays a major role as an interface forconnecting with oneself and others, touching upon its history of symbolizing gods, religion,
power, and authority,.
Tanaka then noted that, with the development of SNS, viewers increasingly want toshare what they understood and felt with regard to artworks. Oshiro, speaking from aclinical art perspective, noted that with art appreciation it is easy to create anenvironment in which everyone’s impressions and feelings concerning a piece are accepted.
Yamaguchi agreed, describing how art appreciation education in museums is an
opportunity for people with different ideas and opinions to sympathize with others.
Pettersson introduced the research of John Falk and Lynn Dierking, which has foundthat the services sought from museums differ depending on visitors’ identities. She
advocated offering information and creating exhibits in ways that correspond to thisdiversity. Furthermore, Pettersson stated that in discussion-based VTS (visual thinking
strategies), rather than looking for a single truth, the experience of discovering manydifferent ideas in, and new aspects of, art works through conservation is important, andthat the facilitator plays a major role. Kawabata noted that VTS has two aspects: viewers
describing their impressions using language, thereby making the elements andrelationships within a piece easier to understand, and accepting similarities anddifferences between their opinions and those of others, thereby nurturing sympathy.
The opinion was then offered that the tendency of viewers to look to the story, history,
and production method behind a piece of artwork should be used as an advantage. At the
Ateneum Art Museum, iconic works that symbolize Finland are chosen and stories about
them constructed. Oshiro said that clinical art takes as a premise differences between
participants’ memories with regard to motifs depicted, and that this can lead to theirrecalling the past.
The second topic was whether museums heighten well-being and happiness. With
regard to this, it was noted that the Ateneum Museum has become more collection-based,

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and has tried to offer an exhibition that emphasizes this collection’s importance and puts
it to full use. They research the backgrounds and histories of works, create materials thatenable visitors to interact with the collection, and hold tours both inside and outside of
Finland. Bringing up the question of the museum’s cooperation with schools, Itkonen said
that art is useful for learning about history, as well as for cultivating children’scommunication and critical skills.
Pettersson emphasized that it is important to love the collection oneself and to bepassionate about telling and sharing its story. She asserted that, by considering thereasons why works are loved by many people and popularizing the works so that they
become icons, they become part of the country’s cultural DNA. Kawabata said thatstructures must be created that lead a nation to love an art museum as though it were
their own, and to want to carry on cultivating it into the future. Tanaka replied by pointing
to Yamaguchi’s earlier example of a child enjoying an art museum, noting that it would
probably lead him to want to take care of the art museum in the future.
At the Ateneum Museum, “memory and magic” serves as a guiding idea, and it is alsopart of their branding strategy. It is important for art museums to think about theirmessage, ideas and philosophy for themselves, and to share them with passion. By
cooperating with various specialized agencies, possibilities expand. With participants thus
having high expectations for the Ateneum Museum’s efforts to expand opportunities for adiverse set of people to encounter art, as well as for its collaborative project with the DNP
Museum, the symposium came to a close.

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Preface
Dr. Susanna Pettersson
Museum Director, Ateneum Art Museum / Finnish National Gallery
Mega trend reports tell us all the same message. Technology will change everything
and our world will not be the same any longer. There will be more leisure time. And
therefore, our intellectual and emotional interest should be directed to a smart path. This
will be a positive challenge for several industries including museums and culture. The
potential is not only where authentic and original objects or works of art meet theiraudiences, but also in the field of added and virtual reality. The focus is on our experiencesand valuable memories that start growing from them.
Based on the scenario above, it’s easy to state that museums and archives are evenmore important today than ever before. Firstly, when people will have more time to spend
with the contents they decide to choose – weather it’s hanging out in the social media,
contributing to the society by volunteer work or utilising services provided by the cultureindustries just to pick up some examples of the many. In this kind of a setting museums
and archives are a good option. As sociologists have pointed out, visiting for example anart exhibition makes you feel elevated, and even a better person.
Secondly, memory organisations such as museums and archives are the backbone of
our identity. Our capacity to encounter, experience and remember is challenged in thecurrent media environment. The amount of visual impulses and information is perhaps
bigger than ever. We don’t share any longer the same facts let alone values. Our ability toanalyse masses of information becomes growingly important as a skill. Worlds are easily
drifting apart and the new class divider is information gap i.e. our capacity to cope withknowledge. At the same time, memory diseases are diagnosed as one of the growing
problems of the ageing population. Navigating in the media and memory environment ismore challenging than ever.
It can be claimed, that in a situation like this people need tools to experience, analyseand understand the world around us. Museums can elaborate big questions on a safe
ground: show, tell and challenge. They also need to be aware of the potential of the newtechnologies and be ready to experiment.
It can also be claimed that in order to cope, we need build our visual understanding
and knowledge around key narratives and iconic images. We can all point out things that

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we know or recognize globally, nationally, regionally and locally. The world’s best known
museums have shining stars in their collections such as Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa
(1503) at the Louvre in Paris, or Botticelli’s La Primavera (1478) at the Uffizi Galleries in
Florence – but also national treasures or locally known important works or objects canprovide life-changing encounters to many visitors.
All of these images make us think and move us emotionally. Even though we haven’t
necessarily seen all the works or objects in real life, we might have an experience of themthrough reproductions, stories we have heard or images that our friends have shared.
One of the key questions is what are those iconic images – or life-changing key
experiences – that can, when being revisited, open our memory locks. Music has been
witnessed to do so, but the impact of the visual arts and iconic images has never been
investigated in-depth.
We’re passionate to find out the potential of the visual arts and memory by comparing
the experiences in Japan and Finland. We wish to demonstrate the life-changing effect thearts can have on people’s well being. Therefore, we have gathered together an ambitious
multidisciplinary team of museum and technology experts, brain researchers, staff
members of the elderly care homes and volunteers participating to the workshops.
Technology has been crucial to our past generations. They have been witnessing theinvention of the photography, telegrams, telephone and television. They have seen how
the world has turned to a much faster and smaller place thanks to technologicalinnovations. They have read science fiction novels including futuristic innovations such as
face time calls that have later become not only reality but also part of our daily lives. They
have learned new ways to experience and remember.
Our generations will see how we can make encounters of valuable museum objects andworks of art and happen in other realities than the one we know so well. While it doesn’tchange the fact that the contact with the authentic and original object is always magical,
it can add many layers to our encounters and experiences and perhaps open completely
new gateways to our memory and well being.

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Speaker profiles
Dr. Susanna Pettersson
Dr. Susanna Pettersson is an art historian specialising inmuseum history, collection studies and history of art history.
She is currently Director of the Ateneum Art Museum, which ispart of the Finnish National Gallery. Her previous post was
Director of the Finnish Institute in London.
Dr Pettersson is a keen museum thinker. For more than twenty
years she has worked in various museum fields, where her
posts have included Director of the Alvar Aalto Foundation andMuseum and Director of Development at the Finnish National
Gallery. She is also Adjunct Professor in Museology at the University of Jyväskylä andAssociate Professor at the Reinwardt Academy in Amsterdam.
Dr Pettersson’s positions of trust include Board Member of Aalto University and Presidentof the Board of the Finnish Institute in Japan.
Ms. Satu Itkonen
Satu Itkonen, MA (Art History), is Head of Public Programmes
at the Ateneum Art Museum, which is part of the Finnish
National Gallery. Ms Itkonen has extensive professional
experience in the art world, in particular the work she has done
since 1996 in museum education at the Ateneum. Until 2014
she worked part-time as a freelance art educator, writer and art
critic. As an educator, Ms. Itkonen specialises in the applicationof various methods in art viewing, plain language and Visual
Thinking Strategies, both in the art museum context and insocial work.
Ms. Atsuko Yamaguchi
Atsuko Yamaguchi is curator at the Museum of Modern
Ceramic Art, Gifu. She became temporary curator in 2009
before being appointed to the current position in 2010. She is a
specialist of western ceramic and design history. Major
exhibitions she supervised include "Decorated Porcelain in Art
Nouveau period" (2005), "A way to connect with the World :Ceramic Art to Look, See and Feel" (2014), "Japanese
Tableware OLD OKURA" (2013), "The Kobayakawa Collection
Meissen Lovely Figurines" (2012) and "ARABIA X Finnish
Pottery : Genealogy of Modern Design in Scandinavia" (2011).

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Mr. Hideaki KawabataDr. Hideaki Kawabata received his MA and PhD in Psychology
after completing graduate school of Human-Environmental
Studies at Kyushu University. Following a research fellow
program at the laboratory of neurobiology of University College
London (UCL) and a position of associate professor at Kagoshima
University, he became associate professor at the Department of
Psychology of Keio University in 2009, his current position. His
field of expertise is emotional psychology and cognitive
neuroscience. Presently, he investigates the brain mechanisms
trigerring the psychology behind experienced value and human subjectivity, like theaesthetic process in art appreciation and the attractiveness perception of interpersonalcommunication.
Mr. Taizo Oshiro
Taizô Ohshiro is assistant professor to the General Basic
Education Course, Department of Social Welfare, Tohoku
Fukushi University (TFU). His field of expertise is Sensitive
Welfare and Clinical art. After a Master in Social Welfare from
Graduate School of General Welfare at TFU, he followed adoctoral course in social welfare in the same graduate school. He
was first assistant at TFU in 2001, then lecturer, before being
appointed to his present position in 2008. He is the co-author of"Experimenting Clinical art to prevent and improve dementia :developing local welfare and social contribution initiatives though art".
Ms. Mina Tanaka
Mina Tanaka is Leader of VR/AR Business Planning &Development Team, Media Business Development Unit,
Communication Department Division, Advanced BusinessCenter, at Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd.(DNP). After working atseveral sections dealing with space design, new media business,and technology research section in DNP, Mina Tanaka has
worked as a project manager for interactive media and spacedesign on the Louvre-DNP Museum Lab project, and dealt withother projects with client companies. After she working on
business design for digital archive, she is currently the leader of
VR/AR Business Planning and Development Team.
＊The profile details were correct at the time of the symposium.

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Speech “Museums and the Future”
Dr. Susanna Pettersson, Director, Ateneum Art Museum/Finnish National Gallery

I am very, very glad to be here today. The topic of my presentation is “Museums andthe Future”. Before moving on to that, however, I would like to say a couple of words about
the Finnish National Gallery.

We have three national museums in Finland: the Ateneum, of which I am the Director,
Kiasma, which is the contemporary art museum, and the Sinebrychoff Art Museum, which
focuses on older foreign art. The Ateneum has one collection consisting of 40,000 works ofart. This year the number of visitors will be approximately 700,000, which is an all-time
record for us, especially given the fact that the population of the country is about 5.5
million.
We show our exhibitions not only on a national level at these three museums, but also
in other countries. Next year this means that we will be showing in eight different
countries. As some of you might know, we have also been lucky to work with you here in
Japan on the Helene Schjerfbeck show that was mentioned in the introduction.
My presentation is really divided into three chapters: “The museum field and key
changes within it”; “The 21st Century”; and “Future orientation”. First some words about
the background. Museums are memory organizations. They collect, research and display
our cultural heritage for the benefit of the public.

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When thinking about the key theme of today's conference, we should keep the audiencein our minds all the time. The origins of museums in Western countries take us back to
the time of the Renaissance, which occurred in the 16th century and mostly in Italy. What
I have in mind especially is the Cabinet of Curiosities, the “Wunderkammer” as it wascalled. It was then that the cornerstones of collecting practices were put in place.
Collections became resources for power, politics and knowledge, because collecting andstudying or research went hand-in-hand.
Why this was important? It was because the early Cabinets of Curiosities led the way
for people to learn about the world. This was of course also the time of the first big
excavations and journeys to the other side of the world. Later on, libraries and archives,
along with the collections related to the museums, became our most important memoryorganizations.
Museums for the nation, the people and the community were already being founded
during the 19th century with its ideas of enlightenment. I mention this because the 19th
century was the most active era in terms of founding museums in Europe. This was also
the time when the major part of the early private and royal collections was opened to the
public. One of the best known examples is the opening of the Louvre at the very end of the
18th century. It was also at this time that the different kinds of museums were established:encyclopedic museums such as the British Museum in London; the Pinakothek, whichmeant a museum for paintings, a very famous example being that in Munich; and the

Glyptothek, which was a museum devoted to sculptures, of which an equally famous
example was founded in Munich and designed by the German architect Leo von Klenze.
Because some artists and collectors made good use of museums, the 19th century was avery busy era in terms of establishing all these different kinds of museums as we know
them today.
It was also an immensely important era in terms of developing different disciplines. If
we think about the history of art history, the key writings were actually created at thistime. They developed alongside the collecting and display practices. Regarding this lastpoint, the audiences played a crucial role from day one, but the relationship between themuseum and its audiences has varied a lot over the various centuries and even decades.
If you think about the ideas of the Enlightenment and the 19th century now, the idea –and this was actually written in one of the newspapers in England – was that the membersof the audience were like empty vessels, and the museum poured information into these13© 2017 Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd.

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empty vessels. Well, nowadays we couldn't even think anything like this, because we work
closely with our museum visitors.
Lots of our practices have, of course, developed immensely. The relationship between
museums and research, knowledge and communicating their contents is crucial in today's
world. This is perhaps one of the key ideas, key thoughts, that I would like you toremember after my presentation, because without research, without knowledge, andwithout communicating their contents, museums would not be museums, they would be
storehouses.
If we think about the relatively long history of the museums, it's not self-evident, andtherefore it's important to understand that the role and position of museums in Westerncountries – especially national museums – was heavily questioned during the 1990s. There
were several reasons for this.

First of all, the visitors – our customers – started

demanding services. There were certainly more players – in other words, museums – inthe field, and then the economic situation became challenging. Customers demanding
services, more players in the field providing the services, and the economic situation:change was necessary.
Therefore, museums were forced to think about four questions that we, for instance,
ask ourselves almost every day when we think about our practices. What we are doing?
Why we are doing what we are doing, for whom, and with what mandates? I think thatthese are the questions every single museum should ask themselves.
Now, regarding the 1990s and the key changes, not only within the museum field but
also within the academia, this was the time of the rise of so-called critical museology.
When I refer to critical museology, I am thinking of the Reinwardt Academy in Amsterdam
in the Netherlands where I am an Associate Professor (though I was not there in the ’90s).
This started encouraging students to be critical. That was very, very good because it
boosted the field in many positive ways. Whereas Reinhardt Academy in Amsterdam
focused on critical museology, Leicester University in the UK continued with its classicalmuseology and remains its center.
The museum profession became much more multifaceted, which led to a lot of
publications, discussions, theories, etc. Museums began to analyze their activities throughdifferent lenses, understanding that these were the factors that actually influenced theircapacity to function, whether they were economic, political, social or cultural. These lenses
are still really useful when planning our activities today.

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Mueums also launched new ways of thinking with regard to customer orientation –being more service-oriented, and certainly more target-oriented.

Once they started

asking questions about expectations of a museum or its position in society, and its
relevance on a local, regional or international level, the field was filled with lots of new
ideas, such as developing evaluation methods, engaging more professionals from wider
fields, and also making comparisons with other actors in the field – because what we canlearn most from is actually from our neighboring areas. Customers’ needs were analyzed
in terms of time, trends, changes in consumer culture, etc.
What was trending after the big critical voices of the 1990s? Certain themes started
emerging. Collections and exhibitions were organized according to themes. There was atendency towards national and international topics. The emergence of mega-events
concerned with world culture, celebrity culture and all that, alongside the record prices at
auction houses, started to feature in our field. We moved into accessibility issues andservice design, which is focused on working with the audience.
How does all of this translate to museums now? What I would say is that we should bereally aware of the history and importance of research. Our capacity to react and surprise,
to work with audiences and communities. And then we really need to be ambitious and weneed to be business-oriented, because without that, the museum business and cultureindustries do not flourish.
It is really important for all of us to understand that the world is faster and very muchsmaller. Thanks to the critical voices, this provides us with a very large market and lotsof opportunities, and that's also one of the key areas of cooperation between DNP and us.
Let’s say that, when we structure activities, we always put the audience at the center. We
focus on collections, exhibitions, events, research. And then, of course, professional
capacity is something that must be taken into account, insomuch as if we don't have some
sort of knowledge in-house, we partner with organizations or corporations that have theknowledge we lack.
Thinking ahead to the future, we are now focusing on things such as challenging
collecting practices. We want to question issues relating to ownership. We want to movetowards sharing our collections not only regionally and nationally but also internationally.
We are fully aware that museums are still authorized sources of information, but we arealso aware that we want to make sure that the audience can participate in theinformation-building. Museums serve as mother ships for experiences. They operate onsite, and operate online. They can be accessed from elsewhere as well. One of the key

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matters relates to how we communicate the contents. What is the role of technology, andwhat is the role of interdisciplinary research and innovative teams? And that's also one of
the key ideas related to our cooperation with DNP.
I'm finishing my presentation with some ideas related to what might change in the
future – first of all, the use of expertise. Instead of having all possible areas of expertise
in-house, we might move in the direction of using so-called clouds of competencies,
collecting teams of specialists around projects. We certainly want to share the images that
we have in the collections – and of course, we're now talking about digital sharing. We
want to involve audiences in the production of knowledge. We want to question ourcollecting practices and modes of display, and develop relationships with other sectors ofsociety. There is one thing that certainly never changes, this one: the human need toencounter the authentic, original art object. That certainly remains the same.
It's about multisensory experiences, social interaction and emotions, and accumulatingknowledge. The very big question – and a very positive challenge – is how we might beable to play around with this, and simulate encounters to ensure that our collections arewidely accessible. This is the task of the memory organizations and the museums. It
creates, wonderful, wonderful potential for the collaboration between DNP and theAteneum Art Museum, the Finnish National Gallery, because we really want to make surethat the collections can be accessed using as many routes and means as possible.

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Speech “New learning at the museum”
Satu Itkonen,
Head of public programs, Ateneum Art Museum/Finnish National Gallery
I am a little bit excited because this is my first time in Japan and the first time I am
meeting you all. Thank you for inviting us here.
My presentation will be very practical, because I am a museum educator. I hope you
might find some new ideas in it from some of the things we have been doing, especially inthe field of museum education.
In this photo, you can see some young people who did a summer job project thissummer in our museum. The photo was taken just before they opened their own, selfcurated small exhibition of paintings made in our museum workshop. These are someother young people who had made these self-portraits, which were inspired by an
exhibition held in our museum. This is just one means of working with audiences in aparticipatory way.

Photo: Erica Othman, Ateneum Art Museum / Finnish National Gallery

This is the structure of my presentation. First, I am going to talk about museums as
contemporary learning environments – not very theoretical, but there will be some ideas.
Then I’ll talk about some recent trends in how people learn in museums. I'll go throughsome different learning needs by giving very practical examples from museums. Then, atthe end, some values, challenges and conclusions.
This is what museums are, as contemporary learning environments, and at their best.
Museums are, I think, very safe places for us to go. They are accessible: physically,
culturally and socio-economically, and also intellectually.

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We should make museums easy places for people to get to. Museums welcome peopleof all ages. Different age groups can meet each other in museums, and we design thingsfor older people and for small children. If a museum is a good place, it will encourageinteraction between people, as well as interaction with and via the art images or objects.
Did any of you ever have fun in museum? Raise your hands. Good, we have things to do.
We have a lot of work to do.
I will give you only three thoughts about how museums have been changing in recent
years. Of course, we can view them in silence, but we can also do more and more inmuseums. It's also possible for people to participate, and we want to encourage people tointerpret, and form their own thoughts about what they see.
Second, we think that museums have an institutional voice. If there is a text, it's likea truth, and it's what the museum says. But more and more museums are beginning totell us who has written the text, from what point of view the text is written. I think this isgood, because there is no machine writing the texts, making the exhibitions or making the
choices. The third thing is that, of course, there are guides talking in the museums. We
also want to encourage people to talk with each other more and more, both metaphoricallyand in practice.
I want to talk about how people have different learning needs, and how we can serve
people with different learning needs in museums. Many people come to museums forcontemplation. They want to see something beautiful, or they want to be alone bythemselves or with a friend, but in peace and quiet, just to relax and contemplate and see.
We want to give people some peace of mind when they come to a museum, like a church.
Many people want to read a lot. They want to have various texts: the title of theexhibition, the sub-heading of each gallery room. Then we have wall texts, extensive labelson each work, leaflets, catalogs, research-oriented catalogs, text online. We have to have
many kinds of levels of texts, and of course it has to be understandable.
There are people who want to have information: some traditional guided tours led byprofessional guides or other specialists, lectures, audio guides. Nowadays, many of ourguided tours also include periods for discussion, and for this we have this text here, VTS,
which means Visual Thinking Strategies. This is a method we also use, and it’s adiscussion-based way of looking at art. We are not giving the people “the truth” about apainting; instead we want them to discuss it more. That can form a part of a nice guided
tour.

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In this picture you can see our museum auditorium, which we also use for giving guided
tours called “Introductions to Exhibitions”. You can get a fair amount of information inthis area. There is a guide and visual presentation for each exhibition going on. Somepeople learn best by doing. I have been reading some research saying that 80% of people
remember if they have done something by themselves, and about 10% of people obtain
their memory by reading. But we know that many people learn best by doing somethingthemselves, doing it with their bodies. In this picture you can see one of our museum’s“open pop-up” workshops. It’s full of people of different ages, who participate in it every
Saturday. It's held in the middle of the museum, so you can go and see the exhibition
afterwards.
Museums around the world are moving towards a more democratic way of working.
Their audiences can be involved with the museums, designing their programs. Sometimes
visitors and other institutions are even designing along with us. This photo shows a genderdebate that was held this summer. There is a conversation, some panelists talking. We
got a full house of people, and new audiences. We designed this event along with someother organizations. We have also just finished a 3-week season of “My Choice” tours in
the Ateneum, in which our staff participated. Not only our Director and my colleague Anna
Maria, but also members of staff led 20-minute “pop-up” tours. They chose and focused on
one art work and talked freely about it. The guides were museum front desk personnel,
guards, curators, researchers, and marketing personnel – so not just curators, but also
people who normally guard the exhibition. They were so enthusiastic, and it was a great
success. It made these people connect with the audience and think about the work of our
professional guides, gaining more self-confidence to talk about art and being proud of theirwork.
It was really great fun for us, and we got a large audience. We are now beginning a
new series, “Ateneum Live”. It consists of debates about current cultural issues in society.
It starts in our new restaurant in 2 weeks’ time.
Some people learn through non-verbal communication, because art doesn't necessarilyneed words. In our dementia project, we trained nurses for elderly people to use art, artgalleries and non-verbal communication with their patients so that they could learn toenjoy and use art and museums. Art images, and the use of different senses, can be a wayof communicating when the ability to communicate with words has vanished. The goal ofsuch projects is to bring generations together in order to learn from one another, and tolink art with people's own lives.

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Of course, many of these examples of learning can be also done online. I do not have somany online examples here, but what we are now planning together is something that isgoing to be quite digital. We can also use the digital world without words. One example isthe Helene Schjerfbeck application, a co-operation with DNP. In this picture, we can see
the hesitation of these three old ladies. First, it’s "Oh my god, what am I going to do with
this?" Then little by little, they become very interested in doing something and touching
the screen and it’s, "Oh, what’s this?" or "How does it work?" This is something we’re going
to be seeing more and more. All of us are learning to use digital ways more and more, andit’s opening up the world of art as well.
To conclude, I’ll talk about some problems. If you work with elderly people, accessibility
can be some kind of challenge. So can trying to reach out to all the people who cannot cometo museums. We should have some online provision for them.
We want to attract young people, but this is a little bit challenging in Finland. We talka lot about the fun of participation. It takes a lot of time, but it's rewarding. How do wereally do things together? There is a kind of question mark here.
There are problems of diversity. How do we embrace all kinds of diversity: sexual,
intellectual, social and cultural? In the end, the problem is funding. Is there any personfrom a museum here who would like to have some more money? No? You are happy withyour funding? Okay, good, wonderful, great.
Finnish National Gallery with you.

Now, I want to share three values of theWith regard to public programs, we have threevalues. They are “togetherness, openness and professionalism”.
“Togetherness” means that we want to create our audience’s opportunity for experience
together. We value all the people who are working in our museum very much.
Togetherness also means we want to bring people in art together. Of course, that's themain thing. Togetherness also means we want to listen to our audiences. It takes time andit's not always easy, but we should listen more to what they need, what they want.
Togetherness is also having fun. We also want to have fun at work, but we would like ourvisitors to have fun too.
The second value is “Openness”.

We would like to develop more open data andcollections online. What does it mean to be open? We should indicate clearly who wrote
this thing, whose opinion this is, whose choice. We would like to use more VTS – Visual
Thinking Strategies – and other methods that make people participate, or those who wantto.

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We are developing outreach projects and entering into discussion with the society
surrounding us. But it is not so easy. We should reach for the stars. What we have been
searching for in the stars and have reached, that is here also. Nothing is impossible. I
could not have imagined that this kind of cooperation would be possible.
The last thing – “Professionalism” – means we should always try to do things as wellas we can. Ateneum’s strategy is to strive towards being like a classic with a twist. Thismeans like classical, but also with something new and something nice. We want torespect history, the people and our audiences. We want to cooperate with the best
possible partners, as we also have this possibility.

Eero Järnefelt: Landscape from Koli
1928
125.50✕196.00 cm
Finnish National Gallery /Ateneum Art Museum
Photo: Finnish National Gallery /Yehia Eweis

Now, here is my last slide. The title is "Fuji Koli". This image is a kind of iconic image
from the Finnish countryside in summer. There is a lake, there is a tree, and you see itfrom above. Most Finnish people say “this is really wonderful. This is something I want tosee”. We are now approaching something quite new in our cooperation. I would now like
you to close your eyes, please. Okay, now, can you see in your minds an image of Mount
Fuji?

Thank you, you may now open your eyes. You could make a pair of these images I

suppose. Thank you for your time and for listening.

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Speech “Museums and collections”
Atsuko Yamaguchi, Assistant Curator, Museum of Modern Ceramic Art, Gifu

We are grateful to be able to talk about this happy topic, “Museums and Well-being”.
Because museums are faced with lot of issues and challenges. But please think of mydiscussion as an example of what we are doing to deal with this, and how we are actuallyable to deliver happiness to our customers.
My specialization is ceramic art, but I have also been involved in education andoutreach programs. I'd like to talk about this topic from two perspectives: as museum
curator and educator. I don’t think most of you have ever been to my museum in Gifu, so
let me introduce this first.
It's a huge structure opened in 2002, designed by the well-known architect, Arata
Isozaki. It's a complex structure: the ceramic park MINO, part of which is the ceramicmuseum. But it is not just a museum. There are also a pottery production area and ateahouse, a lot of different facilities. You can spend a full day enjoying and appreciating
things related to ceramic art.
We are located in a city called Tajimi in Gifu Prefecture, known for its long history inceramics. Back in the 16th century, during the Momoyama period, a well-known tea master
who was also the master of potteries, Furuta Oribe, came from Tajimi City. Even today
ceramics is a huge industry here, but students of ceramics also come to Tajimi to learn
and develop their skills. That's where we are, and how we are, and I would now like totalk about my museum task.
Our collection consists of items from after the Meiji restoration in Japan, basically Art
Nouveau-type ceramics and objects. The regional museums are known for collecting theirlocal collections, but in our case there were already local museums which had their own
collections. We wanted to have a more global or international set of collections. The
characteristic features of our collections are that we include individual artists, but also
have mass-produced items as well as the craft items.
Let me talk about our collections. As you very well know, in Japan many publicmuseums were opened during the economic bubble of the 1980s. Buildings were built first,
without collections already being available, so after the structures opened, the museums
had to get collections. In the 1990s, we faced a similar situation to that discussed by Dr.
Pettersson. Then, in the year 2000 or so, a lot of questions were asked regarding what to22© 2017 Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd.

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do with the collections we had collected. How to make better use of those collections? The
environment has been changing for museums because people's idea of collections is uniquein Japan. Going to museums doesn't mean that you go there to see certain collections
owned by a particular museum. This is not a practice in Japan.
In the case of my ceramics museum, we have two galleries. The one you see now is themain gallery, 900 square meters, which is used for special exhibitions or travelingexhibitions. When we hold special feature exhibitions, we get a lot of people. Sometimes
they form a long queue before the opening, but such cases are very rare. It’s when thespecial feature exhibitions and large traveling exhibitions are held that we get such a large
volume of traffic.
There is a sub-gallery as well, 400 square meters in size. This is the facility used forthe collections for exhibitions on some chosen themes. All the exhibition displays feature
local artists. As I said, we do not collect works of the local artists mainly, but regularly
feature artists so as to exhibit and display the works created by these local artists. Lateron we may include these works.
We do not have a permanent exhibition facility for the overview of the history.
Japanese museums may have some good collections, but collections are not always
permanently on display. In the case of our museum, we don't have a large enoughcollection to organize a permanent display of the collection items; therefore, we holdexhibitions featuring some selected topics or themes. Because if you say, "Here is ourcollection, please come," people in fact don't come. So the issue is how to make people love
our collection. In order to promote people's interest in our collections we have introduced
some initiatives in recent years.
This is one of our collection items from the KPM in Berlin. It’s a centerpiece“Centerpiece decorated with ancient Egyptian women, overglazes and gold” created backin 1902; this is one of the featured items that we hold. Using this as a core we held aspecialized exhibition called "Art Nouveau Decorations". The exhibition was brought toTokyo as well. We have a collection of ceramics from the Art Nouveau period onwards, so
there are a lot of ceramics from the Art Nouveau period. About ten of the ceramics that
we already had in our collection were featured in this particular specialized exhibition.
This is another collection item, by the Meiji period pottery artist, Miyazawa Kōzan.
This was featured in the exhibition titled "Ceramics Japan". This will come to The Shoto
Museum of Art in Tokyo.

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We do have collections but some of the pieces in the collection are featured, so wefeature part of the collection to hold exhibitions. Also, they form part of the visitingexhibitions. About four museums in Japan were able to host the same exhibitions
featuring these themes. That's a way to increase our exposure. We cannot do things likethis by ourselves alone, we need to join hands with other museums to cosponsor these
exhibitions. I think this is a good initiative to increase our exposure.
Also, we collaborate with contemporary artists. In this picture, on the bottom left is
one of our collection items, and on the top right an art work produced by a well-known
contemporary artist. By inviting these contemporary artists, we had a wider opportunity
to expose our collection and make it known to our visitors.
Another exhibition, “Reflection”, featured two contemporary artists. Last year, there
was one contemporary artist and also another artist who was involved in our workshop
for Japanese lacquerware. They chose some pieces from our collection, and then alongside
the pieces they chose, their own works of art were exhibited. By inviting these artists, whohave a different experience and background, to choose pieces from our collections, we'reable to show a different side of our collection.

“Reflection” exhibition venue

As I said, people don't usually go to see the collection. To break away from this situation,
what is important is education for appreciation. As Ms. Itkonen said, art appreciation
closely relates to how museums can display works of art, how to make lighting andcaptions, which includes labeling. It relates to how you want an audience to see the works
of art. It is our future problem.

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With regard to appreciation, we are focusing on education because we want visitors tohave a face-to-face encounter with the works of art. To do that, we have various tools
available, captions or audio guides. All these tools are there to help people enjoy andappreciate more what they are looking at. I’ll tell you something about when these tools
play their role, what kind of appreciation will be brought up, and by what kind of effect.
Our budget for education purposes or outreach purposes has been almost nil about
seven years. My job was to do something without any budget assigned to me. So I had torely on the help of the people, the manpower that we have in the museum. I'd like tointroduce you to three examples of the kind of initiatives we have.
One is the Gallery Talks. Every Sunday there is a gallery talk featuring one of ourcurators. The curators are all specialists in ceramics and potteries, but individually theirexpertise is different. Every week they take turns and have to present their talks in spiteof whether he or she is the person in charge. This is a challenge for them, but also these
are an important opportunity for them to interface with and get together with the visitors.
That's why this weekly Gallery Talk is very important for us.
We want the visitors to start discussing, talking among themselves about the works ofart they are looking at. What they like to hear when they visit museums are like stories:
the background or history, who the artist was. So story narratives are what they like tohear. Because we feature ceramics, how ceramics were produced technically is also
another point of interest – was a lathe used, were dyes used to produce these pieces of art?
There's a message that the museum would like to communicate, but between this andwhat the museum visitors like to hear and learn, there's a gap. That's why I believe there
is potential for us to make a better job of outreach and education.
In the Gallery Talks, we focus on making invisible matters, such as weight or texture,visible to visitors through words. We communicate this because pottery is supposed to bein your hands, but when we display them in museums they are encased in a glass display.
We communicate verbally what their weight is, what their texture is, in this way.
The other example is the parent and child appreciation session. I think this is anattempt made by many museums in Japan, not just by us. Children would visit ourmuseum and choose a certain work of art they liked, and tell their parents that this orthat particular piece of art was their favorite. The following is a very interesting example
I would like to report to you.
A boy came to us with both his parents, father and mother. A member of our staff andhis mother accompanied this small child. He got very excited, and liked to emulate using

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all of his body, and almost copied the work that he was looking at. He had to tell his father
about his favorite art piece from those that he'd seen. The father had not yet seen it, so
the child used all of his resources, body movement and gesture, to try and tell his father
that this particular art work was his favorite, and the father would have to understandwhat his boy was trying to tell him. This is good, to generate dialogue between the boy andthe father.

This boy seemed to come to love the museum. He became almost a curator himself, amember of the museum staff. He was there to tell his father everything he learned about
the museum. For instance, he showed him the caption: "Look at this". When he wastouring the museum with us he had asked, "What was this?" and we told him that thiswas the information about the work. And now he was trying to tell his father that this was
information that explained about a piece of work.
This is a good example of appreciation, having this moment to share the experience
about his favorite art work with his parents.
Another appreciation session with children involved the use of a worksheet. When we
have many children of different age groups visiting us all together, we use theseworksheets. I became very friendly with this boy in a sweatshirt when he had theexhibition of Meissen china. This boy happens to be very familiar with Greek mythology,
and we started talking about Neon Genesis Evangelion. I'm a great fan of Evangelion, so
looking at this we had an interesting discussion about Evangelion. Yes, we were looking
at the same object and piece of work, but the discussion expanded, became inflated. This
was a fourth-year student at elementary school, but he promised me that he was going to
make another visit to the museum. The key thing was that the museum was not a place
where you were supposed to be silent, but a place where you could debate, discuss, talk.
Also, it was a place where somebody to share information with was waiting for you, in thiscase myself.

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This is my last example: appreciation with the involvement of artists. Last year, we
had an exhibition featuring “Iki of the Meiji period” (Superlative Craftsmanship from
Meiji Japan). We held a workshop comparing this with Japanese Sweets. We invited aJapanese sweet maker called Nikka from Kyoto. The making of Japanese sweets is aprocess of not adding all things, but trying to remove things from what it is there already.
You have to choose certain elements or factors from the art works, and try to create andmake the Japanese sweets. A similar process applies to art appreciation.
Because we have a tea house within our premises, a tea ceremony was held for people
to enjoy the Japanese sweets based on their appreciation of a certain work of art. Usually
you are not able to touch the works on display, but this is an opportunity where people areable to actually see and feel the art. Particularly in a tea ceremony environment, people
are able to actually be more involved and more engaged, and could actually talk about this.
This is very important for the operation of museums to go forward. Usually there are
curators at museums, but educators are a totally different presence. I think educators andcurators can work together to change the way the collections are displayed in museums.
That's another area in which we will be trying to make improvements in our museum as
we go forward. Thank you for listening.

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Speech “Art appreciation and the human brain: neural and psychological responses
in aesthetic experiences”
Hideaki Kawabata, Associate Professor, Keio University
The art museum and the brain: people don't think there’s any connection between the
two. However, all kinds of experiences – feeling the beauty, drawing a picture – all theseare basically based upon brain functions. We would like to explore and study beauty andart works as a science. What I would like to talk about today is that the brain actuallytends to seek to enjoy the aesthetic experience of beauty in order to improve one’s sense ofwell-being, to become happy. Achieving well-being means that you will have a pleasurable
and fun feeling. As a result, you will eventually feel happiness and well-being. As a partof that activity or process, our appreciation of art comes into being.
When we look at paintings, how do our brain cells function? Our research methods use
the fMRI and the measuring brainwaves. Have you ever actually tried this MRI? Somepeople might have tried. Because it's kind of noisy. But how can people enjoy the beautyof art? Can you enjoy art and detect the beauty? This is based upon assumptions that we
all feel the beauty.
With regard to painting, there are different categories: landscapes, still-life paintingsand portraits. When you look at a landscape painting, the parahippocampal area in thebrain responds to the place. Because of the location information, the parahippocampal sidearea actually responds. On the other hand, with still-life paintings, the lateral occipitalarea responds to the object, because this is the brain area that is in charge of information
processing when you look at the object. When you look at a portrait, of course, the face or
the human being expressed by the portrait, that comes under the information processing
domain of the brain, the so-called the fusiform, which is at the bottom of the brain. Deepin the brain, the fusiform area responds to the face. Portraits or still-life paintings, these
are the types of categories into which you classify paintings and art. But in the brain,
there are certain domains where the brain responds to the location, object or face.

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The brain information process depends upon the category. So, correspondingly, when
we look at an art work that we classify in the brain, we also classify it accordingly. When
we look at an art work, regardless of the category of art work, how do we appreciate thebeauty? For example, what kind of objects do we feel to be beautiful? It depends upon theindividual person, on differences of culture or gender or past experience that might
differentiate the way of feeling the beauty. We found that there is a common feature when
we feel beauty in the brain. For example, fMRI, the brainwave measurement that you get
when you feel the sense of beauty versus when something's ugly, and then you actually do
identify. In others, the bottom part, which is the deep part of your forehead, theorbitofrontal cortex, works and activates that. When you feel something is ugly it is theleft motor cortex, that is, the left half of the brain, that becomes activated.
Let me give you an idea of what the motor cortex is. Because the motor cortex actually
moves your body – your legs, hands or arms, your limbs – so this is the area, the domainof the brain that is relevant to your hand activation. When you look at an ugly thing, you'd
like to be away from it or you'd like to remove it, brush it off. Maybe that avoidance
behavior occurs in the brain – that's our interpretation. When you look at beauty that
relates to the orbitofrontal cortex, and that's when you feel beauty as you look at abeautiful art work or design. But that domain is also activated when you listen to music
and feel beauty. The red color here, versus the green and yellow colors to the right of thepanel, you see the yellow part is reacting to both the visual and audio stimulation. The

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yellow part is the common area for visual and audio stimuli. That's where the orbitofrontal
cortex is activated. This domain is related to the so-called reward system in the brain. In
other words, for the brain, beauty is like a reward.

Researching the brain’s response to beauty, we began to know that the brain feels
beauty for many objects. Some people find beauty in dancing or mathematical formulaequations. Some mathematicians say, "Oh, it's a beautiful equation." Factory workers said
that when you looked at the design or layout of their plant, you felt, "Oh, it's a beautiful
plant." Some designers who make drawings say, "Oh, it's a beautiful drawing and design."
When the object or thing that you feel is beautiful is so diverse, the common feature is the
reward system in the brain. The beauty is like a reward, and the function of brain after
sensing the beauty is that the reward system is triggered, stimulated, therefore this occurs
in that domain of the brain.
Recently, we did this research experiment. In this photo, you can see a man to whomrubber electrodes have been attached. On his forehead we attached a blue pad, and on the
top of his head we put a red-colored pad. The rubber electrodes are attached. A very weakelectric current flows through your brain from the positive to the negative side. In thislayout diagram, the electric current flows from the motor domain to the frontal brain
domain. To what extent does the person in this stimulus test register beauty when helooks at the art work? Compared to the stimulation, they are less likely to register beauty
after the electric current stimulus. Because the function is inhibited in the orbitofrontal
cortex and prefrontal cortex, and the person is less likely to feel a sense of beauty. On theother hand, to what extent did they register a sense of ugliness, which would not undergo
any change after the electric current stimulus?
What does this mean? We think that beauty and ugliness are two totally different
values or concepts. But they can possibly be coexistent. Actually they sometimes coexist
in so-called modern art. Both beauty and ugliness coexist in some art works such as30© 2017 Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd.

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Francis Bacon's paintings. The concepts of beauty and ugliness became much moreclearly defined through this brain study. Not only a feeling of beauty, but maybe a person's
desires were also stimulated, or some of the person's desires toward the persons or objects,
and that also stimulated the orbitofrontal cortex: the desire to ride a bike, watch TV, eattasty cake, to feel good toward a person. Regardless of the category, this activity of thisorbitofrontal cortex is stimulated or heightened by that kind of stimulus.
You might have heard of the substance dopamine. For example, when you look at
beautiful art and feel it's beautiful, dopamine relates to the reward system in the brain
and that value experience forms the subsequent sense of happiness or well-being. In thedomain of the brain, there is a pink-colored area where you feel joy and happiness. There
are other subdomains related to taste, hobbies, desires, or rewards.
Through visual and auditory stimuli, we feel visual stimuli from artwork, and we feel
auditory stimuli from music. If it is sculpture, you may feel visual and tactile types ofstimuli. Depending on the kind of sensory information processed, we try to satisfy ourdesire. By sensing their beauty we can satisfy the desire. That is the function of the brain,
and then we make judgments about whether we like it or not, or as a hobby you mightmake use of those likings and tastes, and then after that there is pleasure, happinessleading to well-being. That is the entire connected circuit within the brain.
On this basis, having aesthetic experiences and feeling a sense of beauty may form abasis of happiness and well-being. But how we help people to perceive beauty? We have tothink of that. I would like to show you some examples. Beauty can depend upon the frameor context, or another possibility is relationship to the art work. Research in which we areengaged shows that memory and history, communication and dialogue, or getting tiredof/getting used to the art work might have some impact. Within the museum, buying themuseum goods, or PR advertisements, marketing and ticket sales – all that might havesome impact upon the brain science and psychology as well.
One thing I want to tell you is that beauty is very vaguely defined, but depending on
the frame and context it might change. For example, this is an art work by Andy Warhol,
called “The Brillo Soapbox”. If you just saw the boxes piled up in the warehouse, you’d say,"Oh, it's just soapboxes piled up." But if they happen to be exhibited in a museum, it will
create so-called artistic value. So that context, of exhibition in a gallery, might define thevalue of beauty and the art work.
In a recent research experiment of ours you can see this photo. This is just breadcolored blue by mold. What is the difference between “this is artwork” and “this is news

31
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photo”? If we say, "This is artwork," then you may say, "This is just stale old bread, how
do you exhibit it?"You say, "This is in a frame, you can contextualize the art, but it’s justa photo of this old moldy bread." The art context versus the realistic context, depending
upon the context or frame you present. The red color shows the art context-basedpresentation and evaluation. The green one shows realistic presentation. Of course, theconditions might differ. At any rate, when the same thing was shown as a contextualized
and framed work of art it received a higher rating of appreciation in evaluation.
Instructed frame of appreciation← Rating of evaluation →Positive

Negative
Combination of arousal and valence

So the framing context modulates brain activities for decision-making; especiallydecision-making and emotional processing are influenced by that. The particular domain
for these is mostly the prefrontal cortex, but they tend to be more activated, or visual
information processing related to the occipital lobe might be impacted and activated aswell. Involvement in art works can change the viewer’s mood and mind as well.
In our research we did some tests. We made visual material for the test, and then theviewers looked at the art work via a TV program.

We compared just looking at the art

work on TV with asking viewers to take notes, memos, of what they had seen on the TV
screen. In another test, we made the viewer look at the art work and asked them to imitate
it by drafting the painting on their own. We observed in our test how the subject's
psychology changed before and after the test: whether there was anxiety, anger or someother psychological condition.
By looking at the art work, they reduced their levels of anxiety. Especially after they
took notes on the explanation of the art work, or tried to simulate or imitate the painting,their anxiety and anger were alleviated and reduced, which brings happiness to their
psychological state. Through painting, energy is activated, and a person's psychological32© 2017 Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd.

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state is motivated in a better direction. That is one of the findings of our test. In theprevious talk, we heard about a child who imitated an object and art work. Such imitationis good for boosting energy levels and making a psychological change.
I just gave you some examples to show that, in order to make the brain happy, we
would like to show people artwork. By coming up with different initiatives, we can even
improve the way people sense beauty. It will improve the subject's sense of well-being –that is our experience. But we have tested that in a test lab. What about our actual society?
It is very difficult for us to know how you can perceive and sense the beauty, and how thebrain really functions in real museums and art galleries. We try to understand beauty andart works through psychological states and brain functions. At the same time, analyzing
the art work and analyzing how the people appreciate artwork in the museum may bring
us closer to knowing how the brain and psychology function as well.

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Speech “The power of art, as seen from hands-on social welfare experience”
Taizo Oshiro, Associate professor, Tohoku Fukushi University

I am going to talk about how art appreciation can be used in the field of welfare,because I work in this field and want to share some examples with you.
My research and my practice is concerned with so-called “clinical art”. This was started
in 1996 to improve or at least slow down the progression of dementia, by neurosurgeons,doctors and the artist Kenji Kaneko – as well as counselors, called “family care advisors”,
who work with the families of the people with dementia or caregivers. We formed a teamto start this initiative. Through the creative act of making a drawing or sculpture, we
activated the brain so that people would be better able to realize this for themselves. It'sa form of self-expression. It is not just for the elderly with dementia: the art technique isalso used to improve the sensitivity of children, or for sensitivity training, as well as formental health care of the adult population.
“Art therapy”: maybe this is the term that you are familiar with. But when you say “arttherapy” you tend to think of a psychological approach.

Psychotherapy is what you thinkof when you hear the word “art therapy”, where you have a client drawing a picture, andthrough this picture you try to understand the patient’s state of mind. By contrast, clinical
art involves the participants taking part in the creation of art, through which they canchange themselves. The production of art is the key part of this. I think this is importantin terms of the themes of this particular symposium, because as their work of creation,
their art is praised and receives words of encouragement, people can change themselves.
Dementia is a disease where you lose the functionalities that you have acquired in thecourse of your life. If you were able to be 100, it goes down to zero. People have fear andfrustration, because in their daily life people with dementia lose their confidence. They
become frustrated, feel sad. Also family members suffer as well, they become confused andfrustrated. They know that they are not supposed to be mad, but still, because thishappens every day, they tend to raise their voices and get angry. Then they regret what
they have done.
By creating art in such situations, people can enjoy art from the bottom of their heart.
They can create wonderful pieces of art by themselves, and by receiving words of praise,words of encouragement from others, those who participate in the program find joy andbecome more confident, and also find the will to live. In other words – using some technical34© 2017 Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd.

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terms – it improves their self-efficacy, heightens their self-esteem, it improves QoL(quality of life). We believe, therefore, that clinical art improves QoL. This applies not only
to the patients, but to the family members as well. You thought that your father had lost
all of his functions, but now he’s able to produce such a wonderful piece of art and also,
when he is praised, you see your father feeling happy because of this praise. This means
the family members are also relieved, and can also become kinder and gentler than before
when in contact with the father. So that's another change that can be expected.
Practicing a very high-quality art program, participating members of the family arealso involved in art creations and they can enjoy the process. It's known as a respite.
They're tired because every day they have to take care of people with dementia, but thisgives them an opportunity to take a pause and they can enjoy the process of art creation.
They are counseled by professionals, because the family care advisors are there to listen
to their concerns.
Let me explain to you how this clinical art works. First, there are doctors who perform
diagnosis or tests, and who also give treatment. There are clinical artists, who provide thehigh-quality art program. In addition, the families, who also have a lot of fears or concernswith regard to taking care of the dementia, are cared for by advisors, who have a
responsibility to help them. These three players form a team, and work with the patientsand their families.

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The classes are divided according to the level of dementia. For the light cases, we have
12 patients being take care of by four clinical artists, but in the case of most severe
dementia, we have a one-to-one supporting program. It runs for about three months, ninetimes a month, and every session is about two hours long – each session of the art programis about two hours long, and participants can enjoy the clinical art process. Sometimes thepatient takes a test at the same time. At the bottom you can see some information about
the caregivers. Usually, they enjoy this art program together with the patients once amonth, or if need be they can go to a separate room to receive counseling from the family
advisors.
When you hear the words “art program”, you tend to think just about the process of art
making, but clinical art is actually composed of three parts.

We can call it clinical art if

these three parts are all present: Introduction, Art Production and Appreciation. You
cannot just invite a patient to draw a painting or create art on day one, because they are
not used to it. They are tense, or not relaxed. Therefore, in the Introduction part of thethree programs, we invite them to enjoy music or sing or dance, and also to have a
discussion or talk about what they are going to do. This is the initial phase, to create amore relaxed environment. Once the people are more motivated to tackle the art program,we start the next phase.
This next part is very important, the session for Appreciation. We hold these
appreciation sessions or meetings. The paintings drawn by patients are posted, each andevery one of them. All the participants enjoy the appreciation of these art works. In termsof our symposium today this appreciation part is the one which is most relevant, closest
to what we have been talking about.
Because in the clinic, art appreciation sessions are not critique sessions. If you are atart school, you score the students’ work. But in this appreciation session, although advice

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is given by their professors, whatever the quality of the picture, it's always praise, kindwords, that are uttered by participants. Someone said that “you may be difficult to findsome words of praise from such poor drawing because you had studied art and you are thespecialists of art”. But still, in our situation, we always give praise. Because you can findthe goodness in any drawing, any piece of art – there's always some surprise that you canidentify in any piece of work. My sensibility as a clinical artist consists of whether I canfind such goodness and an element of surprise in all pieces of work. I also have tocommunicate verbally my good impressions and the surprise that I detected. Japanesepeople are shy. I was told that the people in Finland are also shy, but when words ofencouragement are heard, peoples’ faces light up, and that improves the confidence levelof the patients. They actually have a moment of joy because their work is praised, because
they know that we are serious about our words. This is the most important part of ourclinical art process.
This does not just apply to welfare programs. I think this is important in our lives insociety, because clinical art is not just a program for the aged, but can be used withchildren as well. All members of society can be targets for this part of the program, because
art is a content that is relevant to all members of society: art appreciation and these
initiatives utilizing art and museums, which are the treasure houses of these contents. I
think there are immense possibilities and opportunities for museums to take part in thisprocess of clinical art, contributing to our community and society. It is very important that
DNP Museum Lab find that possibility. Because acceptance of all individuals and thediversity of people must be recognized.

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Speech “How multimedia systems work for art appreciation”
Ms. Mina Tanaka, Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd.

Dr. Kawabata told us about some different examples of how to verify brain functions,and how we feel beauty from art. At the DNP Museum Lab, we used an interactive
multimedia system to really scientifically study the user’s behavior and response. I’d liketo give you some examples of scientific study and verification.
So far, Kitajima and Ida have already covered the topic of the initiative project by the
DNP Museum Lab, but I'd like to show you several photos of DNP programs. During these
we did scientific research on the subjects: how to measure the increase and decrease ofinterests, as well as their brain systems, called mirror neuron. I'd like to give you theresults of some of our studies. Finally, I'd like to tell you about the future direction that
our joint collaborative project with the Ateneum will head toward.
As Mr. Kitajima mentioned, the DNP Museum Lab started its collaborative projectwith the Louvre Museum in 2006. Its aim is to create a brand-new art experience. By
applying multimedia, it will become a testing ground for art appreciation. The Louvre
provided the art works, as well as the academic information concerning them. Then, wedeveloped a technology for how to display it: the technology, methodology and technicalsolutions. From 2006 to 2013, ten art works were provided to us from the Louvre at thisDNP Gotanda Building. As you can see, these were paintings and statues, excavatedarticles and handicrafts – decorative arts ranging from paintings to three-dimensional
objects. For the appreciation of these works, the project developed various interactive
systems, as well as image programs, contents and workshop tools, almost 100 pieces in all.
Twelve types of multimedia that we developed were actually installed in the Louvre
Museum in Paris. This one is still
displayed in the decorative art
section at the Louvre, so you can
see that today. This one wasremoved two months ago, but thatwas in the Spanish painting sectionof the Louvre, a multimedia display
installed there. This one is stillavailable: it concerns ancient Greek,38© 2017 Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd.

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Etruscans and Roman art, three types of multimedia display. Four different systems arestill displayed in the sections for decorative arts, ancient Greek, Etruscans and Roman
antiquities. If you are planning to visit the Louvre, please make sure to visit these.
To provide a chance to enjoy the art works in places where there are no art works, theFrench and Japanese specialists developed the program for appreciation in workshops
using a tablet. This was actually tested and practiced in a middle school art class. It is
suitable for both children and adults, and many people can now have a chance to try it.
This is a second project by this Museum Lab, which is taking place at the BnF, that is,
the National Library of France. The aim of the project is to digitalize the ancient globe
and celestial globe collections as digital archives. The three top collections of the BnF
include these valuable globes and celestial globes; 55 especially important globes were 3Ddigitalized using photographic tools uniquely developed by DNP. It was of course difficult
to display them to audiences because of conservation concerns, but now the high-definition
precision data enabled them to view them. The globes were returned to France after theend of the exhibition, but this multimedia system is still here, so you can see it today too.
If you wear the head-mounted display, you emerge and enter into the celestial globe bymeans of virtual reality. During the break, I hope you will be able to try out this virtual
reality. On the other side of the wall is the multimedia display room, the exhibition hallfor this virtual reality multimedia system. The multimedia was displayed in Gotanda, but
at the BnF in France, it was also displayed in this way using tablets.

The third project of the Museum Lab is in collaboration with the Finnish National
Museum, the Ateneum. The initial program highlighted Helene Schjerfbeck, the iconic

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national artist of Finland. The commentary system was developed for the paintings on
paper, which are difficult to display; but by means of digitalization, all the works can bedisplayed. All aspects of this artist can be understood. In Japan we had a traveling art
exhibition across the whole country, for example at the Tokyo National University for Fine
Arts and Music as well as the Museum of Modern Art in Hayama. As the previous photo
presenter showed, the multimedia for this purpose is in the permanent exhibition hall at
the Ateneum, Helsinki. We have launched this new project, which is a more ambitious
initiative through collaboration. We are targeting senior viewers, so we would like toexplore the further potential of this effective art appreciation.
Let me tell you some of the results of the scientific study. As I said, the Museum Lab
has developed many different types of appreciation system of this kind. We thenaccumulated knowledge as to how this facilitates viewing skills. Will this multimedia tool
really assist people and facilitate their viewing? Scientific study and academic data must
be collected.
This picture shows a verification of the artwork and multimedia for the sixth exhibition.
There was a portrait of ancient Egypt, which was attached to the top of the mummy's face.
This is a study which was done in collaboration with Keio University under the guidanceof Professor Yasue Mitsukura. In the photo you can see the portable EEG equipment on
the left hand side at the top. The subject wears this machine and then walks around theexhibition hall. The measurement may be limited by this, but you can measure theincrease and decrease of interest by looking at the brainwave.
The other picture shows the ceramic exhibition case. This was the seventh exhibition,
consisting of dishes and tableware of Manufacture nationale de Sèvres. Unless you
actually hold the dish in your hand, you don't really get the feel. If those plates are placed
inside glass showcases, you can't touch them. It looks as though they are jewels, it'sdifficult to understand that they were actually used as plates or tableware. You need othermethods to obtain that understanding, something useful. We focus upon the mirror neuron.
What are mirror neurons? The neuroscientists at Parma University happened to
discover this by using monkeys. When the monkey grabs the food, what kind of brainneuron is functioning? In a normal test, the banana was given to the monkeys so that theywould grab it. But when the human researcher grabbed the banana in front of the monkey,
it actually stimulated the same domain of neurons in the monkey’s brain as it would havedone if he were really holding the banana himself. So that the monkey was trying tounderstand the people’ s actively: if a person grabbed a banana in front of the monkey,

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then he might be wondering whether that person was trying to eat a banana, or whether
he was willing to give him the banana. This may be a response typically observed in social
animals. Of course, the monkey is a social animal; he was trying to understand something
about other monkeys, or what the other person, the human, was doing.
The human brain also has a similar system, called the mirror neuron system. If you
show a hand animation in a narrative program about an art work, it may induce sympathy
in the brain of the viewer. For test purposes, we created a film in which a view of a hand
was inserted. There was another film without the hand. They both showed how ceramic
pottery was made. On top you can see the insert with the hand, while in the bottom
picture there is no hand on the screen. When the hand shot was inserted, the mirror
neuron system was stimulated and activated. The LC and RC of the chart indicate theactivity of the brain related to the movement of the hand. When the hand shot is inserted,
you see activation of the brain. When a person looks at the hand in the image, the person’s
brain works as if they were trying to make such a ceramic. When you try to make anarrative film, maybe you could insert an image of a hand that would facilitate theunderstanding of the viewer.
We discovered an interesting phenomenon when we performed the test for mirror
neurons with or without the hand image. When the tool was manipulated, we removed theimage of the hand – only the tool was shown. Then the tool alone was shown, and themirror neuron system was also activated. It is our assumption that a similar effect wasalso achieved when the viewers imagined the moves of hands just by looking at that tool.

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This picture shows the seventh exhibition of Manufacture nationale de Sèvres, where
we used a miniature version of the ceramic to choose content, instead of a touch panel. If
you put it at a certain designated place, the content will start. It's called a tangible userinterface, because you actually use an object that you can manipulate.
If there are other people looking at the person who is actually manipulating theinterface, what would they feel? We researched this jointly with Professor Shigekazu
Higuchi, of the Kyushu University. In this experiment, we ascertained how the mirror
neuron system works by measuring the brainwaves of the viewers who used the tangibleinterface and touch panel. The user could choose the contents whether they touched thetouch panel image or got hold of the object in their hand and moved it.
In the results, when the two were compared, the mirror neurons were more activatedwhen the observer used the tangible user interface than when they used the touch panel
interface. That might be related to behavior connected to grabbing or moving the actual
object.
In both Finland and Japan, as well as globally, aging of populations is really increasing.
Everyone always hopes that they will stay healthy till the end of their life, both in mind
and in body. We think that the appreciation of art could make a good contribution tophysical health and the mind, and that intellectual stimulation and conversation can give
us a chance to feel sympathy. These projects aim at creating an artificial system which
has a good efficacy of that sort.
Museum Lab has developed knowledge about interaction systems or scientificverification and study methods, and the Ateneum has a different program and expertise.
So we would like to combine the knowledge of these two institutions and make use of thisaccumulated expertise in this new collaborative project. Thank you for your attention.

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Panel discussion【Attendees】
Dr. Susanna Pettersson, Director, Ateneum Art Museum/Finnish National Gallery
Ms. Satu Itkonen, Head of public programs, Ateneum Art Museum/Finnish National
Gallery
Mr. Hideaki Kawabata, Associate Professor, Keio University
Mr. Taizo Oshiro, Associate professor, Tohoku Fukushi University
Ms. Mina Tanaka, Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd.
【Chairperson】
Ms. Atsuko Yamaguchi, Assistant Curator, Museum of Modern Ceramic Art, Gifu
Atsuko Yamaguchi (Chairperson)

All the speakers presented their topics from different

angles, based upon their expertise. Now we would like to cover two subjects as the axis of
our discussion. The first one is: "What is the appreciation of art?" The act of viewing theart and art works? And what kind of impact do we receive from viewing art? The second
major topic is: "Do art museums raise your level of well-being?"
The first theme is what the appreciationof art is. When you look at, view art works,
what kind of reaction or response is occurringin your brain? Maybe additional commentson that could be given in this panel
discussion.
Ms. Itkonen, what do you think of thisposition towards art? What are some of thechallenges with regard to the appreciation of artwork, or some of the experiences andfeelings in your museum?
Satu Itkonen

This question is not an easy one and I don't know if I can answer it

thoroughly, but the appreciation of art is confronting something, I think it’s looking at
yourself and reflecting. It's always important to encounter, and contact. If you're
confronting an art work, you're confronting an idea, a statement. You're also confronting
another person, because somebody has made the art work.

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Susanna Pettersson

I may continue on from that by presenting an example. Not very

long ago, I held an open event at our museum, the Ateneum. Anyone could come in andask the Museum Director any question they liked. Among the members of the audience,
there was a young man about 18 years old, who asked me a tough question: “Is there afuture for the arts?”
I responded to that question by asking him and all of the audience, “Can you imagine
the world without any culture? No paintings, no visual images, no music, no words, nowritten books, no plays, nothing.” It became quite a precious moment in a way, because
everybody understood that’s why we need the arts and what we need art for.
That made us, too think precisely about what art appreciation is. Because without art,
we wouldn't have our cultural identity. At the very end of the day we wouldn't be able tocommunicate without words, or be inspired without the capacity to exchange ideas, etc.
Hideaki Kawabata

What do we think of that topic of well-being in conjunction withthe collection of art works? I think the art work has the aspects of an interface: selfreflection, connection with others, connection or encounter with the author or creator. You
reflect yourself through the art work and the artist, the connection to that – you sharethat. Historically, there were symbols of gods or religion. Then, people shared that artwork,
because artwork was an interface shared by many during wartime. Authority or power
was represented by the art work as interface. Depending upon the era and time, thefeatures of the interface may change. What is needed today is for the interface to connect
with others, yourself or the creator of the art work.
Chairperson

Professor Tanaka, might multimedia have a function in that area as well?

Mina Tanaka

Multimedia for viewing, which has been developed for people to reallylook at the art work, to assist the understanding and viewing of the artwork. That's the
purpose of the development of multimedia technology in many ways. But gradually, if you
develop this Museum Lab, the SNS(social networking service) will be developed further.
People want to share their impressions with others.
Chairperson

Professor Oshiro, you talked about the importance of viewing the artworkwith demented people, and that their art works are shared and commented on by manyothers. Does it relate to this aspect?

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Taizo Oshio

Yes, that is right. One of the merits of art is that every answer is correct.

Even with demented patients, calculation is used as a test. But with mathematical
calculations, there's one correct answer. If you arrive at a wrong answer, it's wrong. On
the other hand, with art appreciation it's different. Your answer is always correct. It's
freer, and even demented people can enjoy that freedom. It’s easy for them to be involvedin this field, and their presence can be accepted and tolerated. That is a good environment,
which is conducive for that kind of the attitude.
Chairperson

Through our Gallery Talks, I have also learned that it is very importantin today’s society to be able to sympathize with others. In a museum, where you can freely
appreciate art and people's different opinions, you will be impressed that there are people
with different impressions and opinions, and it's good that you can share that.
Because you have to accept others, but before accepting others, you have to understandthat there are others with different views, opinions, and everybody's view is correct, as Mr.
Oshiro said. What the museum offers is an open and publicly accessible environment. So
appreciation of art gives us an opportunity to accept others and also to recognize, indeed,that there are others in the same place who may have different views.
Susanna Pettersson

Thank you for pointing out about an important matter. It leads

me to think about the popular research by the American research team, John Falk andLynn Dierking. They have researched museum visitors who have different needs anddifferent identities, and come up with a very helpful idea for analyzing our visitors fromthe perspectives of different needs. To take a concrete example: if my colleague Satu goesto a museum as a mother, she has the identity of a mother. If we go there together, she
has a different identity, as a professional. If you go with a different person with different
needs and different perspectives, you are looking for different services from the same place.
They have actually indicated seven different identities through which the members of
the audience can be categorized. They have to accept others who have different needs. It
is a fact that every day is unique, and all needs are unique. This was already understoodin the 1990s, when American museums first started actually developing those kinds ofservices. They had a dream that they could customize the labels, according to the needs ofthe visitors. They made the information comply with the level of the visitor’s demands andneeds from the exhibition. That was a very ambitious plan at the time, but with current
technology this is something we can achieve.

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Chairperson

Thinking about the Japanese museum, there's a constraint in terms ofbudgeting as well as people, the staff. As far as Japanese museums are concerned, it's still
very difficult to go for “custom-made for the people who come with different identities”.
For Japanese museums, the Ateneum Museum, where is very open to the public, is aperfect example that we should try to emulate and learn from.
I’d like to come back to the question of what art appreciation is. What I feel every day
in my work is that when I view the artwork together with the visitors, they want to know
the story behind that artwork. Therefore, they tend to focus on the background story. I
always have doubts about whether we are successful in connecting the artwork and thevisitor, because people tend to be interested not in the art piece itself, but in what is behindthe piece, the story. Learning and knowing about the background stories are important.
To meet the needs of visitors, we have to improve the environment for viewing the art.
Susanna Pettersson

We are trying to begin to use

VTS (Visual Thinking Strategies). It's a very simple,
discussion-based method. And we try to offer ourgroups guided tours that are kind of conversationbased. For example, we discuss three paintings in frontof us for one hour. If it is well facilitated, the people
will remember those discussions and those three paintings for the rest of their lives. A
good discussion will enable them to see more and more in this piece of art.
When we go to a big museum, some people think, “You are the guide, you do the talking
and we’ll do the listening”. But we have to do a little bit of work to educate the audience,and discuss the artworks. A wonderful guided tour means to look closely, really look, notjust see everything. Even in a big art museum, this is still possible.
Satu Itkonen

Susanna asked me to tell you a bit about the method. It's a discussion-

based tour. We go in front of one painting or piece of art, only 10 or 15 people at a time.
The facilitator or guide only asks people questions about what is going on in this picture.
They will answer “trees”. or “a nice forest”, and so on. Then for each answer the facilitator
makes a paraphrase; so for example if Susanna says something, then I repeat it back toher, and I say roughly the same thing but in different words or in a more abstract way,such as “she can see triangles and circles”. It draws attention to those geometrical forms.
When I make the paraphrase for each answer, Susanna will pay attention to me. She

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doesn't say “right” or “wrong”. Then I might ask additional questions, such as “What did
you see in the art piece, and why did you think so?”People in these conversations come up with lots of wonderful things. It is notsearching for facts or truth. You can look at one image or art work in so many ways, andwe accept all those explanations.
Chairperson

In Japan, VTS was introduced in an early phase, but we noticed that

there are some problems connected with it. One problem is that it is highly influenced by
the capability of the facilitator. Secondly, it is a very important experience for theJapanese and, especially, for the visitors who come to see ceramics and decorative artsthat they can view and enjoy them directly, but they also want to know more about theartwork. How can we satisfy such intellectual curiosity, and still let them view the artwork
directly? It is a difficult problem.
Satu Itkonen

Of course people are interested in knowing about artists, about their era,

about the context of the work. But when the VTS discussion has ended, we just say,“Thank you, it was a lovely conversation.” That’s all. Then we close the conversation
without making any conclusions. The facilitator doesn't make any conclusions. Instead weclose the discussion, and after that we can ask questions freely.
Chairperson

Professor Kawabata mentioned the way things depend upon the context,

the way your feeling of beauty might be changed or influenced. As Ms. Itkonen mentionedthat you might not really give too much information about the work at the beginning, areyou encouraging people just to feel the art work first?
Satu Itkonen

Yes.

Hideaki Kawabata

The VTS have two aspects. One aspect is that, as a linguistic

expression, the viewers make a comment about the artwork in the form of narrative
writing. On the other hand, another person makes a statement, and the visitors or viewers
accept the other person's comments.
The first of these is related to psychology. According to certain studies, you will beable to understand more about the elements of art works, such as the relationship amongpeople depicted in a painting, or a texture or color, when you use verbal expression.

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On the other hand, what about the acceptance aspect? If you accept the relationshipbetween two different comments, sympathy could be nurtured through that kind ofinteraction or discourse. I suppose it should be nurtured – a mutual interaction between
emitting and receiving information. Regarding the question of “the story behind”:
according to a survey, Japanese people said that they tend to prefer Impressionist work.
When you have an exhibition of impressionist paintings, thousands of people visit. For
modern art or a more classic exhibition, there are few visitors. Impressionist art has clearcut stories of the artist or painter, who is strongly depicted. Japanese people love an artist
like Van Gogh. Throughout his life, of course, he had a prestigious image. On the other
hand, we don’t really hear much about Cézanne having an interesting life story, but
actually that’s not true. If you go deeper, you really find more: a very impactful life story
for Cézanne, such as his relationship with Zola. But his stories are not that popularamongst Japanese audiences. People tend to be attracted by the strong, powerful story.
That's a bias which is a feature of human cognition. If you want to attract more attention
to a certain artist or painter, how can you create a story and make it appeal to the potential
audience or visitors?
Chairperson

This means that we should make more use of the advantages of stories

in order to appeal to audiences.
Susanna Pettersson

Your notion about “the story”, it certainly appeals to this age. We

construct the world by using stories. But it is a fact that in the current media world, theamount of information is so messy that we need stories as a backbone.
That sort of brings us back to the history of art, and the importance of something which
we called signature works or iconic works. Every country and every museum have their
iconic works, their signature works, those works that the audience really loves and knows
well. At the Finnish National Gallery, we can never let our iconic works travel because
our members, the audience, would get very, very sad, and the same applies to the majorityof other collections. It's easy to pinpoint which are the iconic works, which are thesignature works, which are the backbones of our collective cultural identity. For example
Leonardo’s Mona Lisa in the Louvre, the Rosetta Stone at the British museum, several
works by Van Gogh at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, and so on. In Japan, it wouldbe Hokusai. Such iconic works are important.

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I have been constructing an idea related to stories, related to the signature works,
related to our need to build a story around certain works. For instance, impressionistic art
is very popular, not only in Japan but all around the world, because during that era somany artists of great importance expressed themselves and created fantastic careers, andthose images are somehow stuck in the back of our heads. We know them, and because weknow them beforehand, it's easier to access that kind of era and its art phenomena.
Modern and contemporary art requires a taste that is a bit more acquired, so that you
have been trained, and have learned to look and know, and find your favorites. But having
said that, we should also bear in mind that we can encounter anything at any time without
any prior knowledge. That sort of brings us back to the idea that there are no right orwrong explanations, and in my mind it's very important to keep that in mind all the time.
Chairperson

Any other additional comments on this line of discussion?

Hideaki Kawabata

I have a question forProfessor Oshiro. By creating a self-history, canan elderly, demented patient recall or provoke
their past memories, or could a link to a story
be revived by this kind of work?
Taizo Oshiro

Yes. For the demented person,

there is a care method called the reminiscence method. You put some article there, andthen help the person to remember what it was. Brain function can be stimulated by sucha method.
This reminiscence method can be applied to artwork creation. If just one apple is tobe painted, a 10-year-old person has their own memory of an apple, but an 80-year-old
person may have different memories associated with it. If you draw a potato, we think ofa sweet potato, but right after or during the Second World War people had to eat yam. It
was not a good thing, so they hate yam. They didn't even want to write a story about yam.
To those people, it could be an opportunity to rethink their ideas about yam. It's said thatit's up to the skill of the facilitators, so the clinical artist has to do a good job. The milieu
surrounding clinical art also has to be conducive to that.

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Chairperson

Thank you very much. I'd like to move on to the next question: does themuseum really improve and heighten the well-being and happiness of the people?
Since Dr. Pettersson assumed her post at the Ateneum Museum, it has become moreof a collection-based museum. It was also able to connect with people from the community,and people began to love the museum because of its focus on the collection. For yourmuseum, what is the relevance, meaning or significance of the collections that you have?
Susanna Pettersson

You’ve hit on my favorite question. The collections are always

displayed at the Ateneum but, as you quite rightly point out, the status or importance ofthe collections has varied. For the past two years, what we have been working on is tostart highlighting the importance of the collection and building a story around it. The
collection exhibition is actually called “Stories of Finnish Art”. We combined andshowcased not only developments within Finnish art, but also amongst international
peers. Artists have always been traveling, interacting and corresponding. They have been
copying each other's works, and borrowing and stealing the best ideas just as Picasso did.
To put it bluntly, the best ideas are there to be stolen. I want to emphasize that we always
not only collect the works, but also research the collection. Then we organize events andaudience development related to the collections. We provide materials for different groups,
including schools.
We don't stop there, because next year – which is the 100th anniversary of Finland's
independence – we are going to send out a second edition of “Stories of Finnish Art”,
touring the country in three major cities. In practice, that means that we are sending out
about 80 works of art as an exhibition. Along with the exhibition we are also organizing
public programs, educational programs. This is very important for communicating thecontents.
We certainly want to prioritize our collections. We want to work a lot with thismaterial, but that doesn't mean that we won't have exhibitions. Quite the contrary: we arealso working a lot in that field, and all the exhibition projects that our collections. The
exhibitions are not only held in-house, but also in numerous countries – next year at the
National Gallery level.
Satu Itkonen

With regard to the question about collections, art museums and well-being, I think it's obvious that if collections contain so many well-loved artworks – because
they are iconic ones – then people do come to see these paintings. Of course it makes people50© 2017 Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd.

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feel much better. Working with our collection, which is going to be on display for many
years, allows us to make our programs and deepen insight into these artworks, if they areavailable for many years.
We have some programs for young people and an extensive cooperation with schools.
We have been making some material for schools to use with our guides. These are related
to our new curriculum in Finnish schools. We have quite the same general goals, theschools and our museum. They relate to better communication, critical skills, visual andliteracy skills, that kind of thing. The new curriculum also makes schools learn outside
the school building. You can learn history and geography from the paintings in our
museum. And of course you can learn languages, that has been going on for many years.
Chairperson

I envy your situation because your visitors are very close to the museum.

I heard that you're celebrating the centenary of your independence next year, the wholecountry, as it is going to be involved in art. That is going to play a very important role inthat celebration. I suppose that's why your collection is loved and understood. On the other
hand, in Japan, we are lacking something. That's my impression. For instance, getting
immersed in the arts in terms of Japanese history, we don't have that kind of experience.
So we are struggling to connect art to history.
Mina Tanaka

In Japan, we don't have many museums with a permanent display space.

Even if there are permanent spaces, the space is very small. If you are to utilize yourcollection in such a limited space, you have to replace the displays every once in a while,and so people cannot be motivated to see one particular art piece that they would like tosee. That is our problem. To encourage people to love the collection, what can you do? I
would like to ask you this question. People may love certain artists, but at least in Japan,
Japanese visitors do not visit one museum to see this or that particular piece from thecollection. Listening to your situation, I'm left with a great feeling of envy.
Susanna Pettersson

My answer to the first question will be very short. There are three

things. First of all, you have to love your collection yourself, because if you don't, no one
else will. Secondly, you have to tell the story, and then you have to share it. That's it. It’s
all about passion. You really have to feel the collection. That's the most important
ingredient.

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The second question was why the people in Finland love the Ateneum. In terms of thecollection and the works, there is quite a simple explanation. It's related to thereproduction of the works.
The Ateneum was the first large-scale public collection. The first works in thecollection were purchased in the 1840s. And it was opened to the public in 1888. Major
parts of the collection consist of much-loved works, and they were reproduced from the
beginning. They were distributed to the whole country. The schools were a very importantchannel for the publications. Quite curiously, they were always the same pictures. It
turned out that, in the early stages of book production, photographing the works was so
expensive that, once certain works had already photographed, they just reused the images.
Therefore, some of the works became really famous.
Now, we are actually testing how to create new iconic works. It can happen equallywell with any renowned artist. Last year, we purchased a major painting by one of themost beloved painters in our country, Hugo Simberg. The work depicts a grandfather,
together with his grandson, walking by the shore of a lake. Now it is displayed in theGrand Gallery, and people are really emotional when they encounter the work, although
they haven't seen it so often. Through their prior knowledge of the painter per se, theysort of take the painting into their cultural DNA.
Chairperson

Iconic work should be nurtured: that’s a very shocking statement, or

important message, for me. We can create an iconic work. I was encouraged by your words.
Hideaki Kawabata

In the case of European and American museums, people share or

nurture such feelings, and that may be their background feeling. Right now an exhibitionof the Detroit Museum is being organized in Tokyo. Detroit is a city that has suffered from
economic depression. At that time, the Detroit Museum tried to sell off the famous works
they owned, but the citizens prevented the sale of the paintings. But in Japan, we don't
have that shared feeling – some of the citizens – in that sense. Maybe you have to develop
a strategy in Japan; otherwise, that's a difficult point right now. I have a question for Ms.
Yamaguchi: How can you do it?
Chairperson

That's my headache too. I will initiate that strategy, the idea that we cancreate an iconic work. We have to review our collection itself.

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Mina Tanaka

No additional comment, but anyway: Earlier, Ms. Yamaguchi told us

about the children’s program. The little boy moving his body to try and express the art
work. That kind of a program, a parent and child viewing experience, is a good memory
experience for those particular parents and their child. That experience of visiting thatmuseum will remain with the boy as a good memory.
Chairperson

Unforgettable material is an important part of the role or function of themuseum. As Dr. Pettersson talked about the keyword ”memory and magic” before,museums will evoke memories, and that is an important role for museums to play. It reallyis memory and magic.
Susanna Pettersson

Memory and magic: that's kind of a guiding idea in everything wedo, no matter whether we talk about collections, exhibitions, events, research, HR,
education programs, etc. That's the lens through which we look at our work and make ourdecisions.
It's part of our brand strategy, as a matter of fact. We worked on our brand strategy
for a year and a half with Jane Wentworth Associates, a London-based branding agency
specializing in museums. They have been working with the Victoria and Albert Museum,for instance, and many others. We invited them to develop a brand strategy with us. It's
also really important that the tone of voice the medium uses is genuinely ours, notsomething that comes from an outside consultant. The ideas and messages, the thought
and philosophy, have to come from within the organization. Because our staff members
did all that together, that's also why it works. That's why we all feel really passionate
about that.
That's probably one of the ideas I want to leave with you today. Whatever you do, do
it with great passion.
Chairperson

Thank you very much. Today, we heard the views of people from many

fields and so on. What is important is that there are a lot of things that we cannot dostandalone. We have to involve, and engage in collaboration with, many outside parties
and others in order to further explore the potential of museums. That's the message I
learned from this session.

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Thank you. So this concludes the panel discussion. Let us now invite questions,because I think the audience would like to come up with lots of questions. Please raise
your hand if you have a question.

Audience

My question is for Ms. Satu. Do you have any specific examples of initiatives

from the school education program? What kind of program do you offer? What kind of
capabilities are nurtured? What are the results or outcome of the school education
program? Because in the future we will be in an uncertain age, but art appreciation might
still nurture some kind of capability or help the kids acquire some particular capability.
Satu Itkonen

Thank you for the question. Actually, this program was launched only

this spring. We haven't yet done any research. The program is ... Actually there are guided
tours, which the schools can order from us. There are six different thematic tours. We havelots of rehearsals for them, and things that the schools can prepare before they come. Thenthey come to the museum (we hope), and they meet our instructor or guide and go on the
tour. Then they go back to school. We have been giving the teachers one kind of education,
or we have had one training session for them.
We should maybe have more, but basically the works and instructions for them, there
are online. You can go to our website and look at all our educational resources. They arealso available in English, though not in Japanese, I'm sorry.
Chairperson

Audience

I think I saw another hand.
You said that children now come to visit museums a lot more. Do you havean initiative or program targeting teachers? Because if the teachers don't like art, thenthe result will probably be negative. Even if there are programs, the teacher may not likethe program, not want to join the program.
Satu Itkonen

There’s no actual program, but two or three times a year we always havethis free, introductory, small training session for the teachers when we have a new
exhibition. We tell them about our new exhibitions; and also, if we have some new methods
or resources, we introduce them to them. Sometimes, we hold some workshops for teachers
about leading workshops, but that is not so often. We should offer more training for the54© 2017 Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd.

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teachers, but many of them are very busy. Some are not, but even if we did anything, someteachers wouldn't come. They have to be at least a bit interested in order to come.
Susanna Pettersson

I would perhaps like to add that we have also started classic

lectures on art history. They are very, very popular. The heavy users are coming, and they
are following the whole lecture series, but they are of course open not only to those whoare interested, but to teachers at large. They get the information because we have very
good communication with schools. I am thinking about other target groups besides
teachers. We are quite soon going to receive our first group of taxi drivers coming to themuseum. That's one of our long-standing dreams: that we could start working with taxi
drivers and hairdressers. Because if you think about which people speak the most withother people, they are normally those two groups. This is something you could try here as
well.
Chairperson Thanks. It's been a long session today. I would like to end our symposium.

（End of symposium）

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Ateneum Art Museum/Finnish National Gallery ✕ DNP Museum Lab related
symposium

Museums and Well-Being:
From the perspective of the possibilities of art appreciation
Proceedings

Supervised by

Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd. DNP Museum Lab

Edited by

Association for Corporate of the Arts

Co-editors

Peter Burt, Mitsuko Ono

Published by

Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd. DNP Museum Lab
DNP Gotanda Building, 3-5-20 Nishigotanda, Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo
http://dnp-museumlab.jp/

Published

March 31, 2017

© 2017 Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd.

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