Abstracts
Niou Mizushima and Aubrey Beardsley

KIRIHARA,Hiroshi

Niou Mizushima（1884-1958 ）was a Japanese-style painter who was active from the end of the Meiji era to the beginning of the Taisho era.
However, his works were not preserved—not even in photographic form. His representative work as an illustrator is a series of black and white
pen illustrations for the illustrated book published in 1919 Ningyo no Nageki: Majutsushi（Mermaid’s Grief: Wizard）, which is a short novel by Jun’ichiro Tanizaki, and the influence of Aubrey Beardsley in the drawings has often been noted. Actually, when he and his fellows exhibited theirworks in the first Koujusha exhibition in 1912, some critics pointed out Beardsley’s influence. According to Mizushima, he knew neither Beardsley
nor his work and only encountered Beardsley’s work for the first time at Koujusha’s group show held in Osaka in 1913. This paper attempts toverify the connection between Niou and Beardsley through critiques of his group show in newspapers and periodicals, his own writings, and thecircumstances of his friendships with other visual artists and his literary circle.

（Chief Curator, The Niigata Bandaijima Art Museum）

An Investigation: Connecting Art Museums and Education
A case study of the change in attitude perceived in teachers at the Visual
Thinking Strategies seminar

AOKI, Yoshiharu
Teachers who participated in the Visual Thinking Strategies seminar experienced the appeal of art appreciation and gained increased
awareness of the fact that the way they see, think, and feel when it comes to something obvious is not always all there is to it. This is an importantfactor in sympathizing, reviewing activities for studying, improving, and creating things with children. As this case study shows, even teachers who
do not work at the same school can appreciate children’s exhibits and experience various ways to see and feel them using visual thinking strategies
when they look at the exhibits together.
Visual thinking is great not only for creativity but also for finding new meanings in things, new ways of seeing and feeling things, and fordeveloping a sense of self-esteem. We also do school visits and collaborate with demonstrational lectures upon request. In order to provide beneficial
training opportunities, we will continue to work even harder to promote projects in collaboration with schools.

（Educator, The Niigata Prefectural Museum of Modern Art）

Kozaburo Takeishi’s Figure of Hyogo Funada

IZAWA, Tomomi

In 2015, we researched Hyogo Funada’s figure, which was placed in the Choukei-Kan Hall of Sakushin Gakuin in Ichinosawa, Utsunomiya City,Tochigi Prefecture. Hyogo Funada was the founder of an education institute, Sakushin Gakuin’s antecedent Shimotsuke Eigakko. This figure wascompleted five years after Hyogo Funada had passed away. It is one of the examples introducing the Nagaoka sculptor in Kozaburo Takeishi: ASculptor’s Notes. It is said that the figure was made in 1929 and was later moved to Choukei-Kan Hall when the hall was built. However, after we
had finished my research, the production date, “Kozaburo 1952,” and his signature were confirmed, leading to the conclusion that the figure wasmade in 1952.
According to sources related to Sakushin Gakuin, in 1929 the Hyogo Funada figure’s unveiling ceremony was held, and there seem to havebeen some pictures taken. What happened to the figure after that is not known. It is possible that the relevant records were lost to fire, so wespeculate that it was reproduced when the Choukei-Kan Hall was built with the name of Hyogo Funada as its foundation. The signature, the uniquefeature of the figure, is written in Japanese which we have never seen before. Since we are unable to properly confirm Kozaburo’s signature andthere are not enough sources regarding the figure, we cannot make an accurate determination. However, it is thought that the figure was likelymade by Kozaburo, or at least in his atelier.

（Curator, The Niigata Prefectural Museum of Modern Art）

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Attempting to Encourage Independence and Creativity in Volunteers
Activity report: Special museum tour presented by Niigata Prefectural Art MuseumFriendship Society volunteers

IZAWA, Tomomi
The Niigata Prefectural Art Museum Friendship Society was established in 1994 as a supporting organization of the Niigata PrefecturalMuseum of Modern Art. Since its establishment, it has carried out volunteer activities. The Art Volunteers system was established in 2008 toconduct more constructive and consistent activities. In the course of building up the volunteers to be more independent and creative, there wasa movement for reorganization, and in fiscal 2014, Art Volunteers was completely integrated into the Friendship Society. The drastic changes inexpectations of volunteers and how the museum can develop its system of cooperation have become big issues.
During fiscal 2015 and 2016, we took charge of the “Special museum tour presented by Niigata Prefectural Art Museum Friendship Societyvolunteers”. It was a trial project to create an opportunity for the volunteers to motivate themselves and use their creativity, which had beenan issue ever since Art Volunteers was established. Although Art Volunteers was integrated into the Friendship Society, we aimed at taking
advantage of the fact that they are the museum’s specialists so that they could become the contact point between the museum and its visitors,
showing off the must-see spots.
Questionnaire responses from visitors were favorable and essentially satisfied our goal, but they also brought to light several problems in ouroperation and structure. Moving forward, I would like to use these responses in our analysis to consider how we should cooperate with the Niigata
Prefectural Art Museum Friendship Society volunteers.

（Curator, The Niigata Prefectural Museum of Modern Art）

New Collection: Tsune Nakamura’s Letters to Giro Sunosaki

MATSUYA, Kuninori

The Niigata Prefectural Museum of Modern Art showcased Tsune Nakamura’s artwork in 1997. At that time, 120 letters from Giro Sunosaki,
one of Tsune’s supporters, were rewritten and collected as a separate volume of the exhibition catalogue to show their friendship. 19 years havepassed since then, and we now have 20 letters that were donated by Michio Kawasaki: 17 unpublished letters that Tsune sent to Sunosaki and3 letters related to Tsune. As further contribution to research on Tsune Nakamura, this article includes two letters from Tsune to Sunosaki thatwere entrusted to us in 2013 and a letter from Yoshifumi Amaya that was itself enclosed in a letter from Tsune to Sunosaki, dated November 14,
1920（not included in the 1997 exhibit’s collection）. We do not know when many of these letters were written, so we have attempted to determine
their dates to complement the collection.

（Senior Curator, The Niigata Prefectural Museum of Modern Art）

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