Huang Goodman · Art Forgotten

Art Forgotten

Art from public museum collections. A mismatched real Japanese law, and some other factoids.

Every object, image and description comes from the museum's own catalogue record, and every object links to its original. Japanese records are machine-translated into English; the museum's Japanese is kept beside the translation because it is the authoritative form. Each law carries its official number and links to e-Gov 法令検索, the Japanese government's statute database.

Incense Burner
{Incense Burner · Seifū Yohei III (Japanese, 1851–1914) · 1893–97 · Cleveland Museum of Art · CC0}

Seifū Yohei III made incense burners in a wide variety of designs and styles. The glaze is described as “crimson glaze” (kōyū); it is also dappled with dark spots of varied opacity and tiny pores throughout, which gives the container a rich, textured effect. Yohei III had the silver lids produced outside the studio by metalwork specialists. For this tripod, they decorated the lid with a variety of flowers.

View the original at Cleveland Museum of Art →
The law
文化芸術基本法
Basic Act on Culture and the Arts
平成十三年法律第百四十八号 · Act No. 148 of 2001

Unusually for a Japanese statute it opens with a preamble, which states that finding joy in creating culture and living among it is an unchanging wish of people, and that culture contributes to world peace. Article 2 then sets the principles: the autonomy of those who make culture must be fully respected, and their creativity, standing and capacity considered.

The cool part. Article 2, paragraph 3 is the line worth reading twice. It says that creating and receiving culture is a right people are born with, and requires an environment in which citizens can appreciate, participate and create regardless of age, disability, economic situation, or the area they live in. Four barriers named in statute, one of which is your postcode. It puts the arts in the same grammatical register as infrastructure. Not a subsidy argued for each year, a standing obligation.

Verify at e-Gov 法令検索 →

Use it Palette for a single-colour run: one ink, heavy stock, nothing else on the sheet.

Description source: museum curator text — not generated