KeMCo’s Inaugural Event Series ‘Cross-scapes: Interconnecting Art’

Keio Museum Commons (KeMCo) is a new university museum designed to foster exchange. Our Inaugural Event Series, Cross-scapes, will allow people to encounter many of the objects which the University has accumulated over the years. Cross-scapes includes two exhibitions, ‘Letter-scape’ and ‘Gathering-scape’, and a symposium event, ‘Book-scape’, which we hope will inspire fresh dialogues, and open up new interpretative horizons.

Date
April 19th (Monday) to June 18th (Friday), 2021
10:00–18:00
[Closed Saturdays, Sundays, and Public Holidays]
Venue
Keio Museum Commons (East Annex, Keio University Mita Campus)
*The entrance is along Sakurada-dori Avenue, not inside the campus.
Audience
Anyone is welcome to attend. (Advance reservation required)
Click here to make a reservation.
Students, faculty, and staff are welcome to visit without prior reservation.
Please show your faculty/staff ID or student ID. Please note that you may be asked to wait in order to avoid congestion.
Cost
Free
Enquiries and
bookings
Keio Museum Commons

Exhibitions

Cross-scape 1

Letter-scape: Century Akao Collection, A World of Letters and Figures

The importing of ‘kanji’ into Japan brought with it Chinese culture, and led to the editing of many stunning literary works. With the transliteration of spoken Japanese into ‘hiragana’, the literary culture of Japan, including genres like waka and tales, began to flourish. In this exhibition, we bring together the newly donated treasures of the Century Akao Collection with the historic holdings of Keio, to paint a picture of the expansive world of Japanese literary culture across time and place, and to bring to light the historical landscape which gave rise to it.

Venue: 3rd Floor Rooms 1 and 2　　*The Letter-scape exhibition will change its display during the exhibition period.

Cross-scape 2

Gathering-scape: Bringing Together Keio’s Cultural Assets

University and School Collections tend to be created through the exchanges of those who gather in such institutions. In this exhibition, we will focus on cultural assets with a connection to Keio: artworks created by graduates of Keio and works that have emerged through a relationship with the University and Schools. This will be an opportunity for people to experience a selection of the University’s holdings, gathered and presented more extensively in our inaugural publication, One Hundred Treasures of the Keio Collections.

Venue: 9th Floor Conference Room, 8th Floor KeMCo StudI/O

*Please see here for Exhibition Highlights: PDF（7.0MB）

Symposium

Book-scape: Cultural landscape of Books and the Web of Associations

The symposium explores how the book as both a physical object and a cultural practice can create its own cultural ‘landscape’ within the network of art, contributing a new insight into it.

Date: May 29th (Saturday), 2021, 13:00-16:00

Venue: 6th Floor G-Lab, East Research Building / Zoom Webinar

Admission Free / Advance Booking via the Website

*Further information will be announced after April 28th.

Speakers:

Dr Kristian Jensen (Former Head of Collections and Curation, the British Library / Chair of the Consortium of European Research Libraries)

Prof Alexandra Gillespie (Vice-president, University of Toronto and Principal, University of Toronto Mississauga)

Dr Alessandro Bianchi (Bodleian Japanese Librarian, University of Oxford)

Prof Takami Matsuda (Director, KeMCo / Professor in the Faculty of Letters, Keio University)

Prof Takahiro Sasaki (Chair and Professor at the Keio Institute of Oriental Classics)

Prof Satoko Tokunaga (Associate Professor in the Faculty of Letters, Keio University)

Events and Workshops

We are scheduling a number of events and workshops to take place during the Inaugural Event Series. For the latest information please visit the KeMCo website.