Autumn is a time for art appreciation and a good time to visit the Fuchu Art Museum!
TUFS Featured
This issue of TUFS Today introduces the Fuchu Art Museum in Fuchu, Tokyo.
Thanks to an agreement entered into between TUFS and the Fuchu Art Museum on October 1, 2019, admission to the art museum is now free for TUFS students and faculty. All you have to do is show your TUFS ID card to have free entry to the museum’s regular and special exhibitions. We encourage all students to take advantage of this wonderful opportunity.
We especially urge you to mark Saturday, November 16, on your calendars. On this day there will be a special gallery talk event at the Fuchu Art Museum arranged by TUFS students. This event was already being planned before the agreement was signed with the museum, but it turns out the timing is perfect to celebrate the new collaboration between the two institutions.
Visit the Fuchu Art Museum!
The Fuchu Art Museum is located in the beautiful surroundings of the Fuchunomori Park in Fuchu, Tokyo.
The Fuchunomori Park retains the lush greenery of the Musashino plains of western Tokyo. In addition to its culture zone where the museum is located, the park has a sports zone with facilities for baseball, tennis and soccer. In the mornings you will see many people playing tennis, walking their dogs, and jogging. You may also come across a group practicing Tai chi, the sights and sounds of which may make you feel as if you had somehow been transported to China.
The Fuchu Art Museum has a collection of more than 2,000 pieces ranging from artwork of the late Edo period to contemporary paintings. It’s core exhibition is of modern Western-style paintings selected from its extensive collection. The Fuchu Art Museum aims to bring beauty into daily life and also holds special exhibits of early modern and later Japanese and Western art based on the theme of “daily life and art.” The museum opened in the year 2000, the same year that the TUFS campus was moved to Fuchu, and since then has held numerous workshops for children and teachers.
The Fuchu Art Museum is a 20-minute walk from Fuchu Station on the Keio Line. From the TUFS campus, you can go by bicycle (15 minutes) or take the Chu Bus (community bus) from Tama Reien on the Tamamachi Route, a 20-minute ride.
There are already some ties between individuals at TUFS and the Fuchu Art Museum. For example, Matsuura Hisao, a TUFS professor emeritus, is a member of the museum’s management committee and TUFS students have held a number of events at the museum, as individuals and in groups. Until the recent agreement signed on October 1, 2019, however, there had been no formal tie between the two institutions. Now that an agreement is in place, we will be seeing more collaborative activities and services, among them free access to the museum for TUFS students (students with a TUFS Student ID card) and faculty members (faculty with a TUFS 1Faculty ID card).
Note: Student and Faculty ID Cards must be shown to enter the museum for free.
Connecting Through Art!: Gallery Talk Event put on by TUFS students in Japanese, English, and Chinese
Connecting Through Art! –In Japanese, English and Chinese will take place on Saturday, November 16, 2019, at the Fuchu Art Museum. Imaseki Yurika (fourth year School of Language and Culture Studies student majoring in Spanish) is one of the TUFS students involved in planning this event and we joined her at a meeting to prepare for the event that was held at the museum in October. The details of the event were decided at this meeting.
There will be two sessions on Saturday, November 16, one in the morning (from 10:30) and the second in the afternoon (from 13:30). The sessions will take place in the museum’s permanent exhibition room. Each session will be further divided into a Japanese-English group and a Japanese-Chinese group. The event is open to speakers of any one of the three languages, Japanese, English or Chinese. Museum staff will provided multilingual explanations of works in the museum’s collection of modern Japanese paintings with an emphasis on landscape paintings. The multicultural background of the participants is expected to provide a lively and invigorating forum on perspectives in art appreciation.
Imaseki Yurika, the aforementioned event planner, is currently studying the work of the Mexican artist David Alfaro Siqueiros in a seminar conducted by TUFS Associate Professor Kuno Ryoichi. She is also active in a number of extracurricular activities. We asked her about her involvement in planning the Fuchu Art Museum event.
How did you get involved in the planning of this event?
Ms. Imaseki : I enjoy art and often go to art museums. This August, I had the opportunity to speak at an event sponsored by Platts, the Fuchu City Citizens Activity Center. The event was on how young people can contribute and the title of my presentation was, “Dive into Art!” I talked about ways people can enhance their appreciation of art.
I later reported on my presentation on Radio Fuchues. Back in June when I participated in a Fuchu Art Museum workshop, I got to meet Takei Toshifumi, one of the museum curators. When I told him about my plans to speak at the Activity Center event in August, he invited me to work with him on planning the museum event for this November. That’s how we got started.
What excites you about this event?
Ms. Imaseki : My feelings about the event are encapsulated in the term “connecting.” Our intent is to connect participants to the museum, to the works of art, and to art history. We want more people, including speakers of other languages, to come any enjoy all that the Fuchu Art Museum has to offer. That is the primary objective of this art appreciation event. Language is one of the barriers that hinders museum accessibility. By removing that barrier, we hope to encourage people to make more frequent visits to the museum and take an active role in talking about the art they can see there. Hopefully, this event will stimulate some lively and informative discussion
Newly arrived students from overseas are especially encouraged to participate in this event. We look forward to seeing many of you there.
Connecting Through Art! ~In Japanese, English and Chinese
Why don’t you visit Fuchu Art Museum to appreciate paintings? It is enjoyable looking at artworks alone but doing so with a variety of participants in a group should also be fun. Under the staff’s guidance, Japanese modern paintings, especially landscape paintings among the museum’s collections, are to be appreciated. Anyone who speaks either Japanese, English or Chinese can casually participate in this program. Through talking about art with people having different cultural backgrounds, let’s find new ways of enjoying art.
Basic Information
Date and Time: Saturday, November 16th, 2019 ①AM 10:30-12:00 ②PM 13:30-15:00
Venue: The permanent exhibition room of Fuchu Art Museum
Participants: Japanese speakers/ English speakers/ Chinese speakers
Number of Participants: 40 for each session on first come basis
Fee: Free (Admission fee to the exhibition is necessary.)
Content: Enjoy talking about several artworks focusing on landscape paintings with different language speakers.
Facilitator: A curator at the museum and others
Other members: Japanese-English/ Japanese- Chinese interpreters
Registration: From 30 minutes before each session at the entrance lobby
Sponsorship: Fuchu Art Museum (1-3, Asama Cho, Fuchu City, Tokyo, in the FUCHU NO MORI PARK)
Inquiry: Hello Dial Service 03-5777-8600