Presentation 3

Curating special exhibitions of Japanese arts foran overseas audience
Dr. Khanh Trinh
Curator of Japanese and Korean Art, Museum Rietberg Zurich, Switzerland
ProfileKhanh Trinh earned her doctorate in East Asian Art History from theUniversity of Zurich. Her research interests focus on the social and culturalcontext of picture-making in eighteenth- and nineteenth century Japan. Priorto her appointment as Curator for Japanese and Korean art at the Museum
Rietberg Zurich in 2015, she worked as a curator and lecturer in Japanese art
history in Berlin, Tokyo and Sydney. She has curated a number of specialexhibitions and contributed as editor and author to their respectivepublications, including Rosetsu – Ferocious Brush (2018); Theatre of Dreams,
Theatre of Play – Nō and Kyōgen in Japan (2014); Kamisaka Sekka: Dawn ofModern Japanese Design (2012); Hymn to Beauty: The Art of Utamaro (2010).
Presently, she is preparing an exhibition on Japanese narrative arts in
European collections.

Regardless their respective areas of expertise and the institution they work for, one of themost challenging but also rewarding tasks that curators encounter in their job is “creatingnarratives.” In this sense, I fully agree with the one sentence in the symposium’s abstract, whichsays: “curators create exhibitions that are influenced by their respective cultures andenvironments.”
Speaking from my own experience as a curator who had worked for different types of museums indiverse continents, I have observed time and again that the narrative of a show is the result of along process of negotiating and navigating the interests of diverse stakeholders. When the doors
to an exhibition are finally opened to the public, the show they are about to see usually no longer
reflect the initial ideas or concept of the curator. For there are always a number of factors at playthat have a decisive impact on the curatorial approach. To make my point, I would like to present
two case studies:
1) “Kamisaka Sekka – Dawn of Modern Japanese Design”, on show at the Art Gallery of
New South Wales, Sydney in 2012, and2) “Rosetsu – Ferocious Brush”, which took place at the Museum Rietberg, Zurich in 2018.
For overseas museums with an encyclopedic collection such as the Art Gallery of New
South Wales or the Museum Rietberg, Asian art in general or Japanese art in particular is but asmall department in a multi-discipline, multi-cultural organization. Country-specific exhibitions are
not the order of the day but can only take place every 4-5 years. As for exhibitions of Japanese art,
even though they tend to enjoy high popularity, they are also notorious as being logisticallycomplex and exceedingly costly. Museums exercise therefore extreme caution in choosing a
project that can potentially attract large crowd of visitors and consequently warrant at least afinancial break-even.
Proposals for topical themes such as Manga and Anime, the art of the samurai, the world ofJapanese ghosts or retrospectives of globally acclaimed contemporary artists like Murakami
Takashi, Yayoi Kusama, or famous pre-modern masters such as Hokusai and Hiroshige would
have no problems to pass the scrutiny of the exhibition committees. However, in order to obtainthe museum board's approval to realize monographic surveys on non-mainstream artists likeRosetsu and Sekka, who – though successful in their own time and fairly recognized in the art
historical discourse of their own country – are largely unknown outside of Japan, curators have tobe persistent and provide strong selling points. In addition, a certain degree of flexibility inmodifying the initial exhibition concept to match budgetary framework, existing display conditions
and, most importantly, the taste of the local audience is required.
In concrete terms, for the show on Kamisaka Sekka at the Art Gallery of New South Wales,
we have decided to emphasize the design aspect of the artist’s work. Sekka was presented as anuniversal artist who believed that his training in painting served the ultimate aim of producing highquality designs for the decoration of functional objects used in everyday life. In his quest ofestablishing a distinctive language for modern Japanese design, Sekka found in the abstract,
decorative aesthetics of the Rinpa tradition a major source of inspiration.
Exhibitions on Kamisaka Sekka which were shown in Japan and the United States andwere forerunners of the Sydney show did not mention the Rinpa tradition as Sekka’s artistic
heritage since they imply that the informed audience would possess the knowledge to understandthe link. For Australian visitors, however, who were less exposed to traditional Japanese art, it wasdeemed necessary to provide the art historical context of Sekka’s stylistic development. Works by
Edo period Rinpa artists were therefore included to form the introductory chapter of the show.
Moreover, in response to the interest of the local audience, the connection to contemporary
practices was added as another essential component for the exhibition narrative. The third part ofthe exhibition focused on Rinpa’s legacy on contemporary art and design. This section featured
the contemporary Japanese artists Yamaguchi Ai and Yamamoto Tarō, the Kyoto-based kimono
makers Takao Hiromu and Takao Kenzō, as well as the Japanese-born, Sydney-based fashion
designer Akira Isogawa.
The tripartite structure of the narrative is reflected in the organization of the exhibition space.
For the works of pre-modern Rinpa artists and of Kamisaka Sekka, which are made of sensitive
materials and hence required a conventional presentation in showcases with reduced lighting, thegalleries for the display of the permanent Japanese and Chinese collections were used. A few
temporary architectural features such as the title wall as well as some semi-solid partitions thatmimicked the appearance of the shoji were added to indicate the change from a permanent
display to a special exhibition and to evoke the atmosphere of a Japanese interior.
The contemporary works, on the other hand, were displayed in the so-called Upper AsianGallery. Designed by the renowned Australian architect Richard Johnson, this space wasconceived as a ‘white cube’ that could be modified and newly arranged each time according to thecontent of a temporary exhibition. By keeping the interventions to the existing structures minimal,
the architect designed only low plinths in the shape of origami paper strips on which thecontemporary art works were installed. This presentation mode underlined the contemporary flairof the objects and created an interesting contrast to the more "traditional" part of the exhibition on
floor below.
The seeds for the exhibition “Rosetsu – Ferocious Brush” were sown in 2015 following thenews of a planned complete renovation of the Ōkyo-Rosetsukan at the Zen temple Muryōji in
Kushimoto, which houses Rosetsu's opus magnum, the set of thirty-two sliding panels producedduring his sojourn in the area in 1796-97. The refurbishment of the temple’s museum ignited
thoughts of an overseas exhibition during the numerous discussions between Reverend Hachida
Shōgen, Head Priest of Muryōji and Director of the Ōkyo-Rosetsukan at the time, and Dr. Matthew
McKelway, Professor of Japanese Art at Columbia University.
After having approached a number of museums in the United States without receiving a
positive response, in 2016, Dr. McKelway proposed the exhibition to the Museum Rietberg inZurich, an institution with a track record of successful monographic surveys on Indian, Chineseand Japanese painters such as Nainsukh of Guler, Luo Ping, Hasegawa Tōhaku or Gibon Sengai.
In contrast to Sydney, for "Rosetsu" we could rely on the fact that the core audience of theMuseum Rietberg are used to exhibitions featuring the work of one single artist as well as to Asian
traditional painting, and thus could maintain the concept of a straightforward monographic show.
Besides organizing it as the first comprehensive survey on Rosetsu ever shown outside of Japan,
we introduced the artist by taking viewers on a journey through Rosetsu’s own travels and into hisfantastic imagination. Furthermore, by focusing solely on Rosetsu’s paintings, the exhibition
offered a rare opportunity to explore the worlds of this unique artist and to re-evaluate thepreconceived notions of eccentricity, realism, and abstraction in pre-modern Japanese art.

Translating this narrative into the physical space of the 1,000 sqm. large underground main
exhibition hall of the Museum Rietberg, designed as a “black box” by the architects Adolf
Krischanitz and Alfred Grazioli in 2007, we have organized the works in a loose chronologicalorder in six chapters. Each bears the name of the location where Rosetsu was active at a certain
phase of his short but prolific career.
The heart of the exhibition was the re-creation of the layout of the fusuma paintings atMuryōji. Conceived as the highlight "art object" within the exhibit, this installation presented anunprecedented opportunity for the audience to view and examine the paintings in their originalarchitectural context. Arranged along the four outer walls, the other sections of the exhibition
complemented the works from Muryōji. They offered key works from museums and collections inJapan, Europe and the United States to trace the phases of Rosetsu’s life as he pursued his
livelihood in Kyoto, Wakayama, Nara, and Hiroshima.
While similar in the basic concept – namely that of re-telling the artistic development of anartist – “Kamisaka Sekka – Dawn of Modern Japanese Design” and “Rosetsu – Ferocious Brush”
offered different narratives which were constructed taking into consideration the local museum
practices and the interest of the respective target audience. In the case of "Sekka", the interest fora hitherto complete unknown artist could be engendered by emphasizing the design aspect andextending the focus from the work of one artist to explore an entire artistic tradition that is still
relevant in today’s Japan and abroad.
For “Rosetsu”, the Museum Rietberg built on its audience's knowledge of and predilection
for Japanese pre-modern painting and hence could concentrate solely on the work of one single
artist. Beyond an aesthetic experience, the faithful reconstruction of the Muryōji's Main Hall
provided visitors with an insight in Rosetsu's creative process, furthering hence a deeper
understanding and appreciation of his singular artistic position.