My Book Ⅰ
Written by Hiroyuki Ikeda
[ No.15 ] My ‘Golden Week ‘Holiday, part 2 5.7, 2013
On Apr. 30, I went to an exhibition of my long-sought, “Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.”. This museum was founded in 1870 and Boston museum is a comprehensive museum that covers the art of cultures around the world. There are over 500,000 items and especially Egyptian art and some areas such as France impressionist paintings have substantial collections. Boston city is deeply connected with Japan and has relations with other Asian countries as a trading port. Also the Boston Museum was focused on collecting art from China, Japan, and India from the early time of the museum’s foundation. Tenshin Okakura was in office at the museum at the beginning of the 20th century ( he entered in 1904 to Boston Museum of Fine Arts). He donated collections such as ' Maitreya statue' of Kaikei,’ 快慶作「弥勒菩薩立像」. The museum is famous for their exhibitions- many collections of outstanding works of Japanese art , Buddhist paintings, scrolls, Ukiyo-e, and Japanese artistic swords; so it is well known that the relationship between Japan and Boston is very deep. An exhibition of masterpiece Ukiyo-e of the Boston Museum was held at the Kobe City Museum in August 2010. Those compositions and works were exported across the sea to the United States in the Meiji era. Torii Kiyonaga清長, Kitagawa Utamaro歌麿, such as Toshusai Sharaku写楽’s works are such a splendor that I suddenly let out a sigh to see them. This time the exhibition’s central works were mainly Buddhist paintings and those works are referred to as the ‘ Hall of Oriental art’. I was satisfied with Okakura Tenshin’s collection of 「吉備大臣入唐絵巻」( the scroll of ‘Kibi-no-Makibi going in to China’) and Ernest Fenollosa’s collection , such as Ogata Korin’s "Matsushima Figure folding screen".( 尾形光琳作：「松島図屏風」)
By the way, the reason I'm concerned with this exhibition is because, by chance, on my American trip, I dropped by Boston in 1979 and I visited the “Museum of Fine Arts, Boston” but unfortrunately the museum was closed that day. So I was hoping to go there once again and I was greatly gratified by these chances to see the great exhibitions in Kobe and Osaka. Thanks to Boston!
Thus my fun of Golden Week was over.
Boston Museum : http://www.boston-nippon.jp/outline/
Museum of Fine Arts Boston : http://www.mfa.org/
Web Museum
世界四大美術館 Four Major Museum in the World
ルーブル Musee du Loovre ( Paris )
Louvre : http://www.louvre.fr/jp
エルミタージュ Hermitage ( Saint Petersburg ) :
http://hermitagemusic-japan.org/museum01-winter.php
メトロポリタン The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Met ( New York)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art : http://www.metmuseum.org/
ボストン Museum of Fine Arts, Boston ( Boston)
May 5, Children's day holiday, I went to my church service. It was a balmy day.
