Struggles between curators and artists: the case of the Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Fine Arts in Japan in the early 1980s

摘要

This paper, which takes the form of a case study, focuses on the conflictualrelations between two particular agents, the curator and the local artist, whichbecame prevalent in public art museums in Japan from the 1970s. These twoagents had affinities to different sets of culture, and their conflict was intensifiedover the use of regional museums. I discuss the most controversial example ofsuch conflicts, which took place at the Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Fine Arts,and I show the complexity of these agents, their struggles and their outcomes.For this purpose of the analysis, I combine Pierre Bourdieu's field theory and theconceptual framework of transculturation. Field theory explains the mechanismsof ongoing struggles between the agents associated with different cultures overthe boundaries of the field. The perspective of transculturation is useful as wayof expanding Bourdieu's theory and as a means of understanding the complexityand fluidity of the field structure. Originally developed in relation to postcolonialstudies, the concept of transculturation highlights both the hybridity of modernJapanese culture and the interactions between different cultures in the artisticfield. The case of Tochigi shows that regional art museums in Japan have beendeveloping not as 'frontiers' or 'fortress' of the curator but as 'contact zones' ¨C i.e.the sites where the curator and the local artist interact