On BankART1929

BankART1929: Then and Now
BankART1929 is a Yokohama City project designed to revitalize theheart of the city by utilizing refurbished historical city buildings forthe development of contemporary culture and the arts. The Yokohama City Government covers the utilities and provides rent-free
use of the renovated properties that now form the two wings ofBankART1929. The central space, informally known as BankART
1929 Yokohama, occupies the former Daiichi Bank building, while
the other, BankART Studio NYK, is housed in a defunct warehouseof the Japanese shipping company, Nippon Yusen Kaisha(NYK).
Together these spaces comprise 3,000m2. The City of Yokohama
also underwrites the approximate ¥80,000,000 in annual expenditures for facility operations, janitorial services, security and stafﬁng.
BankART at least matches this sum through its own revenues andco-administers the two spaces in conjunction with Yokohama City.
Between BankARTʼs two spaces there are ten permanent staff andapproximately another ten people who serve as interim and parttime staff. With the initial two-year experimental program now
behind us, BankART has expanded into full-scale projects. I wouldlike to document what has been accomplished thus far and where
BankART is headed.
The Concepts Behind BankART1929
i. origin of the BankART nameBank ＋ ART. A neologism for a former bank building transformed
for cultural and arts activities. 1929 refers to the year in which theDaiichi Bank building was completed in Yokohama, as well as, theyear in which New Yorkʼs Museum of Modern Art was founded. Theyear 1929 is also symbolic in that it mark the year in which world
panic struck after the stock market crashed and the presence of art
became all the more critical in these grim economic times.
ii. new possibilities for public-private partnerships
Because BankART is a public institution in some measure, it strives
to ensure access to all citizens. At the same time, its for-proﬁt
sector allows it the independence to advance its own groundbreaking projects. In this way, BankART seeks to establish a new modelof public and private partnership. Most signiﬁcant to this model isthe active exchange among members on our promotional board.
Composed of independent advisors, the committee meets once amonth onsite at BankART. It also convenes periodically for more
informal meetings at outside venues with representatives both fromBankART and the City of Yokohama.
iii. instrument for city building
BankARTʼs investment in culture and the arts is not intended as art
for artʼs sake, but rather culture and the arts for the purpose of citybuilding. It is, in other words, an instrument for city building. TheCity of Yokohama has offered BankART the freedom to use thisinstrument well.
iv. high degree of freedom
BankART1929 maintains independence within the private sector
from its revenues drawn from the rental of various arts spaces,
tuition fees from BankARTʼs school, sales at its pub and café andother ventures. Recently, we have been actively engaged in coordination work as a for-proﬁt enterprise outside of BankART.

v. work in progress
Our management decision to open the entire BankART spacewithin 45 days meant that both its hard and soft sides were still inprocess. Opening for business with few facilities in place, the pub,shop and school have developed into smooth operations throughthe input of various individuals and specialists. It is common knowledge that the human infant is born the most immature of all
mammals, and indeed like an infant, BankART was born immatureand has been instilled with a diversity of knowledge and power
along the way.
vi. catcher not the pitcher
While BankART naturally highlights its own projects, it is extremely
important to BankARTʼs civic role to take into account proposals
from citizens, artists and others, and to the extent possible, assist
in their coordination. No proposal that is pitched to BankART isrejected outright and no proposal is returned, providing it is feasible. We maintain an open-door policy and make sure that the exit
door is a narrow one.
vii. flex space
Given that the historic Daiichi Bank building was not expressly
designed for the arts, from the start the BankART space had almost
no capacity for events and exhibitions. We modiﬁed the structure
by installing a reception desk, a wall structure measuring 2.8 x 3.6 x
0.7 meters, theater lighting and a sound system, all of which aremobile, for the various space requirements of art, dance and otherforms of artistic expression.
viii. flex time
In practice, the BankART space is open round the clock year round.
This ﬂexibility allows for all-night events as well as opens the spacefor commercial use, such as for magazine shoots, which helps tocircumvent overlapping with BankARTʼs normal hours of operation.
Like the Japanese convenience store that utilizes expensive realestate in the heart of the city for its vigorous business, BankART
too has naturally evolved toward high-density usage of its space.
BankARTʼs Business Framework
Viewed from the outside, it might appear that BankART1929 is arather unconventional operation. But given that it manages a reception desk, shop, pub, café, artist studios, lifelong learning courses,
and an event planning and coordination business, essentially it is
no different than the structure of existing cultural institutions. Why
then has BankART attracted so much attention from other cities
and from abroad? What makes BankART unique?

BankARTʼs reception desk is one example. At BankART we recognize that the space we occupy is in an historic building that offers ascenic view, making it a community asset for the citizens of Yokohama. Whether or not public events are held here, the spaceremains open for those who come to take in the architecture or theview. In this way, we are creating an environment that cultivates
patrons from among ordinary people. Perhaps the most signiﬁcantpart of this effort is the work of the reception staff engaged insharing data about BankARTʼs visitors. Through a steady processof soliciting e-mail addresses and feedback from each visitor to thespace, such as contacts whom might have introduced a new visitor
to BankART, we have taken steps beyond ﬁelding simple inquiries
at the desk. We continue to compile e-mail, home and business

On BankART1929 249addresses into a database that has already approached 35,000entries. In practice, it is difﬁcult for an institution of BankARTʼsscale to run a reception desk like that of private galleries, thus
making it distinct.
The reception desk doubles as the BankART Shop, a bookstore
specializing in arts related books. We appointed a specialist inmuseum shop operations for our purchasing, and while we recognized that doing so meant that we would operate without a proﬁt,
we have persevered as the scale of operations has gradually
increased. We currently stock some 3,000 items and sales to teachers, arts consultants, curators and other similar parties have similarly increased. Indeed, while these examples of the desk and shop
may seem insigniﬁcant, they characterize the linkage between BankARTʼs pace of evolution and awareness of economic realities.
Opening for business on the same day as BankARTʼs grandopening, the BankART Pub operates until 11:00 PM year round. Asan entrée to events in progress, for studio artists or for before orafter school lectures, as well as, for ordinary people with little
knowledge of the arts, the pub serves as a crossroad for all of BankARTʼs ventures. In the BankART space, there is the café. In theNYK space, the pub. The pub, like BankARTʼs reception desk, is a
one-person operation that doubles as the reception and information desk for the NYK space. The pub offers a menu of unpretentious, moderately priced drinks in the ¥350 range. Monthly sales
started at ¥450,000 and currently are in the neighborhood of¥1,000,000 per month.
The unique aspect of BankARTʼs school is not simply the courseofferings so much as its status as an accredited educational institution, albeit a small one. Eight units accumulated over a two-month
period earn one credit. Classes meet daily Monday thru Saturday insmall groups of no more than twenty people. Featuring moreadvanced classes at the lifelong learning and graduate levels, theschool aspires to serve as a modern-day “temple school,” or terakoya, a Buddhist educational facility popular in the Edo period(1603-1868) that encouraged high standards and diverse learning.
To date, BankART has offered 80 courses to over 1,000 studentstaught by 241 instructors and guest lecturers. Collaboration among
students and between teachers and students is a vital dimension of
the program. In a seminar on art criticism, for example, students
produce independent works of criticism, and in a photography
course, they hold a group exhibition. The classes foster teamwork,and even after these classes come to an end, relationships andartistic exchange continue.
BankARTʼs content business is not limited to circulating catalogues
for our exhibitions, but has extended into other publishing activities. If there is an interesting proposal that falls outside our sponsored projects, as stated before, we will endeavor to take it on. We
are also active in digital production services. To date, we have completed approximately ﬁfteen discrete projects. Supported by Yokohama city employee volunteers, for instance, we held a contest to
name and design the label for a Yokohama breweryʼs new wheatbeer brewed from the legendary pure water of the nearby mountainvillage of Dôshi in Yamanashi Prefecture that supplies Yokohama
with much of its drinking water.
In the BankART NYK space, there are nine 20-80m2 studios thatartists involved in our artist-in-studio project can use in exchange

250 On BankART1929

for two months of course credit. The project invites artists to Yokohama who are willing to participate actively in opening receptions
and are available for open studio nights and similar events with theidea that this interaction is nurturing. Because we can now guarantee accommodations, we have also initiated a resident artists
program.
Coordination projects represent BankARTʼs greatest asset. Throughour space rental business, aid to the press, feedback on publicity
materials and input on potentially infeasible projects, we put forth
our best efforts to improve the quality of the events themselves. If
the content of a proposal is solid, in many cases we offer to provide
funding and participate in the planning. Of the 1,000 or so coordination offers BankART receives annually, about one third of them arebrought to fruition.
BankARTʼs basic concept is simple̶we seek to take Yokohamaʼscultural assets and make them contemporary. Our mission is todetermine how best to tap and expand the existing potential ofeach asset, be it an historic building, the city, local food, old photographs, or even butoh dancer Kazuo Ohno.
BankART1929 and Total Openness
Now I would like to touch on the concept “Openness = Sharing,”
which underlies BankARTʼs distinctive concepts and frameworkthat I have just introduced. Borrowing a passage from Station andTrade (Eki to eki, 駅と易) that documents the opening of BankART:
I would like to think of BankART1929 as a train station.
(In fact, both of BankARTʼs structures are along the edge of and on
the upper portion of Yokohamaʼs Bashamichi Station on the Minato
Mirai Subway Line.) I envision BankART as an open space for casually passing time as in a bustling European train station: wherepeople come and go; sip a cup of coffee or down a glass of beer;nap on a bench; where people occasionally get into a ﬁght; where
they choose to perform music out in the open. Indeed, Yokohama isstill a city of commerce. It is a place of exchange where people
come together, where artists are nurtured, goods move in and out,
information ﬂows in and out and the economy is vigorous. I would
like to transform the economic structure of the city to enable both
the doers and the supporters to make a living, and I believe
BankART is an experimental site where this can happen.

We would like BankART to be a thoroughly open space. Our objective is to ﬁgure out how to develop the operating system of existingmuseums from the inside out by determining how this institution
can be understood and perform. In response to the exhibition“BankART Life: 24 Hours of Hospitality” that ran continuously for 50
days when BankART partnered with the 2005 Yokohama Triennial, amuseum curator sent the following message:
Promotional copy at the exhibition reading “Can you stay overnightin the exhibition space?” noted that ofﬁcial Triennial volunteers andartistsʼ assistants could do so, and some actually did stay there atnight. Creating a space for relaxation conveyed a particular impression of the Triennialʼs second exhibition hall, indeed turning it into arelaxed (or perhaps I should say “laid-back”) space. In part, ofcourse, this can be attributed to the subject matter of the exhibition, but at the same time, doesnʼt it also grow out of the distinctivespace of the meeting room within an NPO operation? Engagement

with a subject matter in a recreational space conveys an impression
to the creators̶be they architects, designers or artists however
different they are from one another̶ that tends to loosen the entire
structure in which their different elements mix. That is, myriad elements combine contributing to the attainment of relaxation.
Meanwhile, the question “Can you stay overnight in the exhibition
space?” also realigns the relationship between art and exhibitions.
Because the radicalism seen here is the sort of activity that
BankART has engaged in from the beginning, I think it indicates therestiveness as well as the theoretical possibilities of this organization. “BankART Life/Life in BankART” is another example of promotional copy that frequently appeared in the exhibition. I believe thisis a cumulative expression of the activities in this space...Partneringwith a big event like the Triennial, reworking it and adapting it toBankARTʼs concepts and the globalizing of BankARTʼs activities
themselves should emerge as something of great meaning.
Yusuke Minami
Senior Curator, The National Art Center, Tokyo
Regardless of the appropriateness of the word radicalism, it is clearthat BankART pushes the boundaries of a public institution byworking toward being a fully open space.
BankART1929ʼs Future Course
BankARTʼs experimental projects have been assessed in a variety
of ways and have evolved through the stages as described below.
During this evolutionary process, we have received guidance froman assessment panel (advancement panel), submitted a three-yearplan and have been approved for continuing operations. The following three points outline the evolving goals of our experimental
projects to date:• Spreading awareness the pioneering existence of a creative community project.
• Building a network with other Japanese cities as well as a globalone.
• Increasing ﬁscal independence.
Several projects already have come to fruition along this trajectory.
The creators of the Kitanaka Project in the Yokohama neighborhood of the same name, for example, have realized their plans forsecuring a site for the projectʼs activities. Last year Mikangumi andother design groups primarily composed of architects, moved theiroperations to the Honmachi Building across from BankART1929.
Planning has also begun for a project that is not limited to a single
building but one that connects buildings throughout an entire zone.
Other projects also underway include BankARTʼs involvement in
the planning stages of “EIZON,” an imaging exhibition that connects the city to historical structures and “BankART Sakura Villa,”
an art and crime-prevention project in cooperation with local residents, government, and police in a former red light district.

(USA) global art and technology festival ZERO1 in collaboration
with the city of Yokohama and Tokyo University of the Arts.
Recently, the City of Yokohama has started to phase out its fundingof BankART annually in 10% increments, and we are seeking ways
to make managerial adjustments to increase self-supported earnings while also expanding basic programming and coordination
projects outside of BankART.
Conclusion: From Top Down to Bottom Up
I see BankART1929 as a place of inexhaustible goodwill. From thebudgetary and institutional perspectives, I cannot say that on thesubject of compensation, it is comparable with other public institutions. But our administrative people are always hard working, ourexperimental projects enjoy great latitude, and overall, our work isquite thrilling.

Art played a leading role in the formation of the cities of New Yorkand Berlin. Working in concert with their respective private sectors,
local and national governments, New York and Berlin increased cultural engagement in even their roughest neighborhoods. But thisapproach cannot speak for contemporary Japan. We started withthe assistance of the Yokohama city government, partnered withthe private sector, and then shifted control in that direction̶wemust take this approach. The problem now is what comes next.
Misunderstandings notwithstanding, because of the very conceptthat is BankART, I believe that disengaging from the public sector isa critical step. Collaborative work with the government will continue
hereafter and it is evident that we are working toward maintaining
substantial support. But as BankART, it is important that we ﬁnd therole that best ﬁts BankART, cultivate this role and proceed to make
BankART ﬁnancially viable.
A participant at a symposium addressing Japanʼs shift toward adesignated manager system in its public institutions remarked, “Artmuseums created without requisite motivation will disappear from alack of motivation.” These words challenge BankARTʼs own existence. BankART1929 has shifted into the second phase of its development. Meanwhile, I have become rather deeply engaged the city,
have thought about it, even had my own body somewhat transformed by it, and also have steered clear of animosity, accumulated
some experience in the city, and now am moving toward total openness. Simply put, I desire that this work continues.

In addition, we have started to engage in working actively withother Japanese cities as well as in global networking. Such networking projects include: “BankART Tsumari,” inaugurated to takeadvantage of opportunities to participate in environmental-relatedart festivals; lectures by the French architect Dominique Perraultand artist Christian Boltanski; and participation in the San JoseOn BankART1929 251