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Original articles on art, artists, architecture, exhibitions, galleries, museums and cultural institutions around Tokyo, Japan.

Sold Out?

by John McGee

Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography
(Image courtesy Tokyo Museum of Contemporary Art)

In a financial crisis, arts funding always sinks faster than the ship it's on. Local taxes float many of Tokyo's city-owned museums, from the art deco Teien Art Museum in Meguro to the Edo-Tokyo Museum in Ryogoku. With Tokyo's current weak economy, Governor Shintaro Ishihara has singled out two of the city's museums, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoT) in Kiba and the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography (TMMP) in Ebisu, for economic revitalization. Hoping to help raise awareness of and funding for the ailing, bubble-era museums, Ishihara appointed the former president of Shiseido, Yoshiharu Fukuhara, as director of the TMMP last November and the former president of Asahi Breweries, Hirotaro Higuchi, as director of MoT this February.

Chief curators at the museums, Junichi Shioda (MoT) and Tadashi Matsushima (TMMP), are uncertain about this new and somewhat unsettling concept of businessmen running museums. But they also recognize the dreary economic facts. At MoT, the exhibition budget was cut by 50 percent this year. And at TMMP,  Matsushima expects tax-based funding to drop from 90 percent to 60 or even 50 percent of the total budget. 

Such fiscal problems are hardly unique to Japan. Museums worldwide often depend more on the support of deep-pocketed patrons and benefactors than the turnstile receipts (or taxes) of the paying public. This mixture of public and private funding serves European and American institutions fairly well, but private support of the arts is still a relatively new concept here. While corporate sponsorship is increasingly being seen as good PR (with, in fact, Shiseido and Asahi at the forefront), a lack of tax incentives and different cultural attitudes limit donations to Japanese museums. 

In terms of fundraising, things look promising. New MoT director Higuchi proved he has the ability to attract sponsors to the arts during his successful fund-raising stint as president of the National Opera House in Hatsudai. And Fukuhara, the new TMMP director, has good connections on both sides of the art/business equation—two of his uncles were well-known photographers. Museum curators, too, have taken over some fundraising tasks, albeit reluctantly. 

The other key component of the recovery formula at both MoT and TMMP is raising public awareness and attendance, partly via a popularization of the art programming—attract a wider audience through less ambitious shows. Higuchi, whose business background is generally thought to be stronger than his awareness of contemporary art, makes the final call on exhibitions. One of his first additions to the schedule is a Ferrari exhibition set for February 2002. Across town, Matsushima sees a shift in the artistic/popular ratio of their exhibitions from roughly 70:30 to 50:50. 

It's ironic that Governor Ishihara hopes to champion these two museums by subjecting them to a dubious future under a capitalist business model. Or is it? Corporate fundraising seems mostly positive. And though the popularization plan may (or may not) boost the number of visitors at the expense of diluted curatorial vision, it will at least engender healthy debate about the mission and responsibility of an art museum to its taxpaying supporters, and to the history and future of the city's culture.

©2006 John McGee

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