Summary of the course

Niikura: Over the two weeks of this course, using the Ex-Noguchi Room as a model case, we’ve learned about preservation, inheritance, and use of cultural properties at universities. The original Noguchi Room was created at Keio University after World War II, through a collaboration between two artists, Isamu Noguchi and Yoshiro Taniguchi. However, the room’s extremely high artistic value was not communicated well within the university community, and as result, the room ended up being dismantled and partially rebuilt at another location.

Kirishima: In this course, we’ve introduced some of the activities of the Keio University Art Center. We at the center learned a lesson from the case of the Noguchi Room, and we now make greater efforts to record, preserve, use, and raise awareness about architecture on campus. As we’ve seen, in order to protect cultural properties, especially architectural cultural properties, it is extremely important to promote the use of building interiors, while still protecting the spaces and their fixtures, and thereby raise awareness of the existence and value of each property. To carry out these tasks on an ongoing basis, it is essential to collaborate within the university, and share the value of properties.

Many universities have their own artistic resources, but sometimes their value is not recognized, and they remain unused as cultural properties. Even when efforts are being made to manage and use cultural properties, there are few opportunities to publicize the activities of individual universities to the outside world. We will continue working to enhance the visibility and value of art resources at our university, based on the Noguchi Room Archive and the Architecture of Keio Project. I hope you will make use of similar strategies in your own initiatives. It is also my hope that art resources will come into more active use at many universities.