Talk events and Gallery tours from last event

You can now look at the photos of the talk sessions and gallery tours from the last event at our official website.

Contemporary Art in History
Speakers : Yutaka Mino (Director, Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art)  & Takashi Murakami (artist)

Mr.Mino and Mr.Murakami discussed and compared various subject about contemporary art and antique art in Japan.
Mr.Yutaka discussed his concerns about museums and culture in Japan; about what museums need to do to invite and educate the young Japanese. In Japan, the population of museum visitor is very high as well as the age group.
Mr.Murakami showed the first antique he purchased in Kyoto. Since then, he has been collecting crafts and contemporary art crafts and has been selling them at his gallery shop. Mr.Murakami says that the quality of antique depend on the history the object carries and what you see in them.  The idea of mitate (to seek a different quality in something that it originally did not have) is his interest in craft (especially ones of second class).
Questions where asked from the audience to both speakers about the art market and why they have to be so expensive, producing young artist, and does age have relation with collecting antiques.

You can read more or watch USTREAM (both only in Japanese) at KaiKai KiKi's Japanese website.

(Fallow the link of 'Event' page from our official website )

The Attraction of Looking at, Buying and Collecting Art
Speakers: : Tomio Koyama (Tomio Koyama Gallery) & Nameko Shinsan (artist, manga illustrator and essayist)

Tomio Koyama's profession is dealing with world wide contemporary art. Although he is not a professional antique dealer, he collects and appriciate antiques as one of his collection of art. He has published a book about how to buy and appreciate them from the view of his own. On the other hand, Ms.Nameko has never purchased or collected an antique in her life. She questions Mr.Koyama about purchasing antiques as a beginer and her great interest is about the spiritual side of dealing with antiques.
She asks about how to start with going into the galleries, such as; Do you have to dress properly? What is the easy genre you can get started with? Her questions about antique galleries are probably what most people have - a place where you need courage to step in, and a place of too many things to know about before you step in. She is also concerned about the spiritual energy of the former owner that might dwell in it.
Mr.Koyama answers these questions in simple words and says that the most important thing is to actually ask the staff in the gallery or find a navigator who can teach you the knowledge about certain items. The most enjoyable part of antique is to think about the history and the people who made it. Of course, if you are concerned about the spiritual energy that might be attached to the item, you might want to buy something you don't have to worry about.