The Japan Foundation Award 50th Anniversary Messages from Previous Awardees - Alexandra Munroe

(c) David Heald
2017 The Japan Foundation Award
Senior Curator at Large, Global Arts, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation / Former Director, Japan Society Gallery and Vice-President, Arts and Culture, Japan Society
Alexandra Munroe
[U.S.A.]
Japan Foundation Awards 50th Anniversary
Over the course of my thirty-year museum career in promoting Japanese art to American audiences, I have been fortunate to work with the Japan Foundation on several exhibition projects. The honor, encouragement, and gratification such a recognition bestows upon a scholar’s work is unique.
When I began my research on postwar Japanese avant-garde art in the mid-1980s, I was virtually the only curator working in an American museum who believed in the importance and potential of this art historical subject. It was uncharted territory. But I held passionate conviction in the legitimacy of this history and the vitality of this new field, and believed that new perspectives would expand the ways we see and teach both Japanese art and international modern art studies.
It was a lonely road. But I was blessed by the far-sighted endorsement and support of the Japan Foundation -- from the president to the New York directors and to the teams of curators and registrars. They funded my research as a Fellow in the early 1990s and organized the US tour of Japanese Art after 1945: Scream Against the Sky in 1994-95. Organized by the Yokohama Museum of Art, the exhibition was presented at the Guggenheim Museum, New York and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art through 1995, accompanied by a major book published by Harry N. Abrams which soon became the textbook for postwar Japanese art studies in the Anglophone world.
Since then, the international field of modern and contemporary Japanese art has matured, with an advanced bibliography, sophisticated discourse, dedicated museum professionals and brilliant academic scholars, and even a robust international art market. Japan’s bold and creative artists now feel part of a global conversation about the times we live in, and push at the extremes of our collective experience in new ways that bend our imagination and shape our global culture. This ongoing cross-cultural work has been consistently supported by the Japan Foundation. Among the Guggenheim exhibitions I have organized with Japan Foundation support are Lee Ufan: Marking Infinity (2011) and Gutai: Splendid Playground (2013).
Japan Foundation has never been a passive funder. Their role as champions of contemporary Japanese art in a global art history and on the international stage has been the single-most effective agent of change in the field. Their visionary collaborations with hundreds of artists, critics, and scholars have made history and influenced our culture. Together, we have helped to disrupt, expand and recalibrate our views of modern and contemporary art from circa 1945 to the present.
As Yoko Ono says, A dream you dream alone is just a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.
Alexandra Munroe
(Original text in English)
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