Akira Akiyama

On the Exhibition of the Imperial Treasures in Nuremberg

In a letter of 2/4/1506 from Venice to his friend Willibald Pirckheimer, Albrecht Durer ordered his mother to sell his prints at the fair of the‘treasure’(Heiltum) in Nuremberg. The imperial treasures of the Holy Roman Empire had been deposited in Nuremberg since 1424, and were exhibited annually on the second Friday after Easter to the public until 1524. For this occasion a multitude of people came to view the treasures, which served as both the imperial regalia and holy relics. A two-week-long fair was held and merchants gathered from different parts of the Empire.
This article reconstructs the process by which imperial treasures were exhibited within the historical context of relic exposition. It also discusses how the presence of these relics in Nuremberg influenced representation, the question of which motifs were related to them, and speculates on Durer's commercial strategy.

Tomoko Yoshida

The Salons under the Ancien Regime

The so-called Salons, or exhibitions of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Paris, are essential for understanding eighteenth-century French painting. Basic information on this phenomenon, however, still remains unclear, including facts such as in what years these exhibitions were held during the early period.
The principal aim of this paper is to trace in detail the history and practice of the Salons until the Revolution, consulting the proceedings of the Academy. It will be shown how difficult it was to establish the exhibition system. The display of works of art to the public was certainly meant to demonstrate the status of the visual arts as an intellectual activity, but the materialization of this idea posed many practical problems.
For the academicians, displaying their work was an obligation specified in the rules and regulations, but one concerning which they had reservations for various reasons. On the other hand, with the maturation of Salons, there emerged certain artists who began actively to profit from it.

Tsukasa Kodera

Mobility, Market, and Media
The History of Van Gogh Exhibitions

The reception of artists and artworks have so far been studied first as critical history through the analysis of critical texts, then through an analysis of films as audio-visual, verbal texts. Yet the mobility of artworks in the art market and their exhibition history has been studied only sporadically, despite the fact that this mobility has always played a crucial role in the establishments of the reputation of artists, especially in its early phase. In the case of Van Gogh the most important person for the diffusion of his works was undoubtedly Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, who possessed more works than the two major contemporary Van Gogh collections combined, those of the Van Gogh and Kroller-Muller Museums, along with numerous documents including the letters of Vincent to Theo. This essay traces fragments of Johanna's various roles in the early diffusion of Van Gogh's works and the movement of his works throughout the history of Van Gogh exhibitions. In the past 113 years Van Gogh exhibitions have undergone great transformation, and changes in both the market and exhibition practice have brought about changes in the artist's image and of viewers’attitudes toward his works. In order to clarify this phenomenon, attention has also been paid to transformations of the artist's image in recent films and in cybermedia.

Sandra Persuy
Transration by Takanobu Tobishima

The Sources of the Twentieth Century
A Multidisciplinary European Vision of Art

In 1960 the National Museum of Modern Art, then situated in the Palace of Tokyo, held an ambitious exhibition entitled “The Sources of the Twentieth Century.”This monumental undertaking was conceived and directed by the famous writer and curator Jean Cassou, who would later have a great influence on important exhibitions held, for example, at the Georges Pompidou Center during the 1970s and 80s. Despite facing certain difficulties -- such as the refusal by collectors or museums to lend important paintings -- Cassou strove for the realization of his ambition to relate many aspects of artistic creation in Europe from 1884 to 1930. The significance of this exhibition lies in its multidisciplinarity; a wide range of objects were exhibited on this occasion, not only paintings and sculpture but also books, musical scores, furniture, film posters, and so on. Cassou thus succeeded in evoking the sprit of an era when modernist art had come into its own.

Shinichiro Osaki

The Politics of Exhibition
Three Exhibitions of Minimal Art

Exhibitions often created new trends in twentieth-century art. After World War II, American art replaced French art as the mainstream of modern artistic expression. Several exhibitions played important roles in this process. Exhibitions not only reflected the time but were deeply related to the meanings of the exhibited works themselves, and even regulated the context of contemporary art.
This essay tries to verify how and in what circumstances Minimal art, a unique aesthetic movement, contributed to establish the orthodoxy and superiority of American art through three significant exhibitions held in the late 1960s:“Primary Structures: Younger American and British Sculpture,”“The Art of Real: U.S.A. 1948-1968,”and“Anti-Illusion: Procedures/Materials.”