DH-JAC2009 The 1st International Symposium on Digital Humanities for Japanese Arts and Cultures

DAY 2 13:50-14:20

Collections of Japanese Arts in the Czech Republic and their Digitation

Dear colleagues,
First, let me thank you for your kind consideration of including Japanese art curators from the former Eastern Europe to cooperate on your project: the project of using advanced digital technologies for integrating major collections of Japanese art into a huge comprehensive database located in the Art Research Centre at the Ritsumeikan University in Kyóto, to be accessible to research workers and to the interested public worldwide. This initiative, I believe, is as important for the field of studies of Japanese art as the Kyoto Protocol was for global ecology.

The purpose of my contribution is to give you basic information on the Japanese art collections in the Czech Republic. For your easy orientation, I am enclosing a chart showing the structure and approximate quantity of artefacts in five important Czech public collections of Japanese art. Next, I will talk about the situation in researching Japanese arts in my country, and will outline the steps we are taking to improve the present situation of our museums, both with regard to visitor rate and to offering a digital database of our collections on the web. In the second part, I will show you a short powerpoint presentation introducing our museums containing Japanese art as well as the best pieces of Japanese art in our collections. Because the act of seeing and experiencing gets us to the point in a much quicker manner than hearing or reading a lot of information. This cognition, by the way, lies behind your project of making the visual information on Japanese art accessible as widely as possible.

Information on two large Japanese art collections inthe Czech Republic

Surprisingly enough, there are a great many objects of Japanese art in the Czech Republic, regardless of the fact that the historical lands called Bohemia and Moravia have never had access to the sea and have no colonial past. The total amount of Japanese art in our country is estimated to approximate 30,000 items of arts and crafts, the majority of over 20,000 artefacts forming a part of the oldest Czech ethnographic museum, the Náprstek museum, which was founded in 1863. The Japanese artefacts are located in two major state collections (over 25,000 pieces), in six smaller regional museums (ca 3,000 pieces) and in about 82 chateaux and castles throughout the country that belonged to former nobility (over 2,000 pieces). That means that Japanese art in the Czech Republic is disseminated at approximately 90 different locations

The two major Asian art collections belong under the roof of the National Museum and the National Gallery in Prague. These names are so similar that they cause confusion - the Japanese version is Kokuritsu hakubutsukan and Kokuritsu bijutsukan. For this reason, they are better known under their original names as The Náprstek Museum (NpM) and The Oriental Art Collection (NG Or). Essentially, the first, (larger and older) one is is an ethnographical collection, and the other (smaller and younger) one, is a fine arts collection. However, a lot of material in both collections is quite similar as there is no distinct line between fine and applied arts in Asian cultures.

The Náprstek Museum of Asian, African and American Cultures

The Náprstek Museum of Asian, African and American Cultures (NpM) includes the largest Asian art museum in the Czech Republic with over 48 000 Asian art and crafts items. A Czech entrepreneur, intellectual and politician Vojta Náprstek (1826-1897) laid its foundation stone in 1863 and dreamt about the earliest Industrial Museum on the European continent, even though the eventual construction of a new building in Prague was not finished before 1886. By his cosmopolitan spirit, Náprstek showed the way to other industrial museums built in Bohemia and Moravia in the last quarter of the 19th century, few of them containing a Japanese section.[1] Many Czech collectors - travellers, writers, artists and orientalists - donated their private collections to the Náprstek Museum, which became a part of the National Museum (founded in 1818) in 1933. Regardless of the vast amount of 20, 000 Japanese artefacts, there is only one curator of Japanese art working at a time. For the last 10 years, it has been Dr. Alice Kraemerová, the former specialist on Japanese literature from Charles University. She is a valuable successor to the former curator Dr. Libuše Boháčková (1926-1994), who worked for the museum for 30 years, prepared many small exhibitions and died suddenly during her extensive work.[2] Dr. Boháčková cooperated with Prof. Susumu Matsudaira from Kóbe, who spent half a year in the Czech Republic in 1985 researching the complete set of over one thousand Osaka prints both from the NpM and the NG Oriental Art Collection. As an outcome of this research, a large Ýsaka prints exhibition was shown in the Náprstek Museum in two instalments in 1985. It is a great pity that the outcome of their early research into Ósaka prints has never been published. Only recently (in December 2008), Dr. Kraemerová published the Ósaka prints from the Náprstek Museum (536 items) on a CD. The NpM staff is gradually creating a database of their vast collections, but only a minor part has yet been made public. There is no permanent exhibition of NpM Asian art today, and the collections are presented by parts in the form of temporary exhibitions, seldom accompanied by catalogues. In recent years, thanks to the quickly developing digital technologies, the NpM prefers using much cheaper CD form for publishing the results of their museum work.[3] For the last 40 years, NpM has issued a printed edition of a scholarly bulletin entitled Annals of the Náprstek Museum.[4] To conclude, there are many objects in the Náprstek Museum, completely unknown, that are still waiting for scholarly accessment.

The National Gallery's Collection of Oriental Art

The National Gallery's Collection of Oriental Art nowadays embraces about 12,500 pieces of Asian art and one thousand pieces of African art.[5] It was founded by Dr. Lubor Hájek (1921-2000) in November 1951 with the goal of creating a strong central state-run institution that would take complex care of Oriental art at the same level as of European art. His intention of creating a central art institution, that would accommodate the best quality oriental collections from the whole country, has been fulfilled. About 10, 000 superior Asian arts and crafts pieces were assembled in the 1950s from various aristocratic collections and from several other state institutions (such as the Prague Castle, Oriental Institute of the Academy of Sciences, the Charles University, The Applied Arts Museum), as well as from older stock of the National Gallery. In total, there are 5,754 Japanese art pieces. The Japanese artefacts mostly represent the late phases of art development during the Tokugawa era.[6] The bulk of the collection is formed by 4,352 graphics and paintings, and there are smaller collections of 142 pieces of wooden sculpture and other 3D objects, 453 items of porcelain and ceramics, 194 lacquerware objects, 502 metallic art objects (including 288 tsuba), 49 ivory netsuke and 45 textile art samples. The prints collection contains almost a thousand volumes of illustrated books, manuscripts and complete albums of ukiyoe prints from the former collection of the famous Czech collector of Japanese art, Joe Hloucha (1881-1957). Our 47 albums of óban prints are often catalogued under a single inventory number though they contain complete series of ukiyoe. The early period of ukiyoe is represented by 60 pieces: there are 63 sheets by Harunobu, 2 Sharaku, 60 Utamaro, 95 Toyokuni I, 233 Kuniyoshi, 954 Hokusai, and 335 Hiroshige prints. The most remarkable volume belongs to Kunisada with 608 prints and 510 Ósaka prints. Meiji prints are represented by 688 items. The structure of the NG Japanese collection is described in detail in the enclosed chart. In addition, I will show you the best examples on the powerpoint.

The state of research of Japanese art collections in the Czech Republic in the past

You are well aware that our part of Europe was isolated from the rest of the world for 50 years between the Nazi occupation of 1939 and the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989. The isolation had two effects: First, much of the oriental art treasures brought to our lands by previous generations of art collectors remained preserved (unlike the case of Germany and Poland, where a substantial part of art treasures was carried away in 1945 to the Soviet Union as a war booty), though not untouched (it changed its location and owners a few times due to the holocaust and totalitarian „nationalizing"). Second, though quite intense study and museum work was carried on within the local oriental art collections by museum staff and researchers with academic backgrounds in oriental studies, we lacked proper education, international contacts, literature, and material for comparison, so that our museum work outcome could be labelled as "lagging behind" international research standards. The state-run area of oriental studies has always had insufficient finance so that state investment into specialized education, museum staff, exhibitions and research output in the form of catalogues was very limited in the communist era. On the other hand, we prepared a great number of exhibitions of oriental art and the interest of our public in Japanese art was always very keen.[7] The more we were shut out from the outer world the more we wanted to get a sight of it - and art was an easy vehicle for opening up, as it was politically neutral and we were free to study it from books. Thus, the founder of the NG Oriental Collection and the Czech history and theory of non-European art, Dr. Lubor Hájek, was completely self-taught and never travelled to Asia before he reached 50. Yet, during the 35 years of his work for the National Gallery he managed to assemble a collection of 12 000 Asian artworks, did a lot of excellent research, prepared numerous exhibitions and brought up a few followers. His knowledge of Asian art was very wide - starting from the mid 1950s, he published 20 books on various aspects and categories of Asian art. Thanks to Dr. Hájek, the Czech history of Asian arts was laid on solid grounds.

Support of the Japanese art studies from the Japanese side

Within the last twenty years, since the liberation of the Soviet Bloc socialist countries in 1989, the situation has greatly changed. Our young curators started visiting international conferences and they are gradually establishing contacts with their foreign colleagues; though university training in the field of the history of Japanese art is still quite limited, or indeed nonexistent in our countries, we learn from books, catalogues and from practical tasks. We continue to prepare many exhibitions from our own resources and we are able to publish catalogues, often in two languages, because we are getting more finance for publishing, and we have access to the comparative material through databases of various international museums on the internet. We owe a great deal of gratitude to the substantial support received for the study and publication of Japanese art from Japanese foundations: first, from the Japan Foundation, but also from the Tóshiba Foundation or the Nichibunken or Tóbunken. This active promotion and support of Japanese art collections abroad is an admirable - and unique - aspect of Japanese cultural policy and I often appreciate it in my public speeches on exhibition openings, on radio and Czech TV. As a director of a large Asian art collection, I can assure you that no other Asian (nor European) state pays such careful attention to promoting and publishing their national art abroad as does Japan.

Within the last fifteen years, Japan played a very active role in helping our Japanese arts and crafts collections to get closer public attention. The support was started by Nichibunken, which published a selective catalogue of Czech collections of Japanese art as early as in 1994 and 1995, followed by the Kódansha de-luxe edition of Great European Collections of Japanese art in 1994 and 1995. The Japan Foundation subsidised the printing of the eight large catalogues on various Czech collections of Japanese art.[9] Moreover, the Japan Foundation sent to Europe several touring exhibitions of contemporary art and crafts and sponsored a large exchange exhibition between the National Museum in Kyóto and the National Gallery in Prague in 2002. They also provided finance for depository furniture and utensils, plus hinoki storage boxes for Japanese art both in the National Gallery and the Náprstek Museum in 2003. The most important Japan Foundation support was financing of the ENJAC conference in Prague in 2004, which enabled 40 curators from many European countries to assemble and create a European Network of Japanese Arts Collections.

Professor Kreiner from Bonn University, the moving spirit of the organisation, has given a lucid account of the aims and meaning of such union.The topic of Prague ENJAC Conference was a review of the state of digitation of Japanese art collections in Europe and individual contributions were published in a CD form in 2005. We also created a web page, though we found no time or financial resources to run the web site or to contitue with our regular meetings.

The present day situation in Czech Japanese art studies

The National Gallery still uses the obsolete term Oriental Art Collection for the lack of another suitable one-word term. Not only the term but also the interest in Oriental art nowadays seems to be a slightly obsolete concept, and we feel that we need to bring our field of interest closer to the present day forms of presentation. Generally, the public interest in museum collections of non- European art has weakened; because there is freedom of travel many people simply fly and see Asian art treasures in their original surroundings, or prefer to watch documentary movies on TV. Globalisation has brought many new sources of information and the interest of people is many-sided and widely dispersed, so that Asian art gets a smaller portion of the cultural cake. We have entered the world of strict specialisation, which naturally does not allow employed people to follow much more than their own field of interest. And only few people find time to go to museums during weekdays.

In consequence, visitor attendance at our permanent exhibition of Asian Art at Zbraslav Chateau, a fine baroque building that lies at half an hour's distance from the centre of Prague, is very low - about a thousand visitors a month. Due to this fact, the General Director of the National Gallery has decided to move the Oriental Art Collection to the centre of Prague. Starting from December 12, 2009 we will be relocated to the Kinsky Palace on the Old Town Square in the very centre of town. We are moving out to much smaller spaces (space reduction from 2 400 m2 to 800 m2, from 1000 objects to ca 400 artefacts). The present six Japanese art rooms will be reduced to two in the Kinsky Palace. Zbraslav Chateau will close on July 7, so you can see it only until that date. However, we hope to create a good new permanent exhibition of Asian art visited by the crowds of Prague centre tourists.

Czech museums lack Japanese art specialists. The history of Asian art has never been taught in Czech universities, though semester courses providing basic information on non-European art form a part of the general History of Art curriculum. Japanese, Chinese, and Indian university studies are focused on literature or linguistics. Young university students seek to obtain, as instantly as possible, practical benefits from their activities, and for that reason they mostly prefer economy and business orientated jobs after they graduate.[10] Because the curatorial work in museums is very poorly paid, there are almost no young people willing to follow up the difficult specialisation in Japanese art. To sum up, there are only four specialists in our country working in the Japanese art field at present.[11] There are no trained staff in the regions and the two central collections are badly missing young people with proper specialisation.[12] Due to the lack of specialists in Asian art in regional museums, the field research in the country still waits for the few curators of the National Gallery and the Náprstek Museum to accomplish a complete scrutiny and record of Czech oriental art collections.[13] The policy of the Czech Ministry of Culture provides scientific research grants and so our curators are gradually fulfilling this public duty of recording and registering oriental art treasures throughout the country. By establishing more voluntary lectures on oriental art at Charles University in PraguePrague, we hope to gain more young people for the field of study. For this purpose, we are building a new large lecture hall in the new seat of the Oriental Art Collection of the National Gallery in the Kinsky Palace in collaboration with Charles University, which will be used for lectures on Asian art and cultures.

Web access to Czech oriental art collections

If we want to work on databases of our collections we need more Japanese art specialists as well as technically advanced staff and programme operators to make adequate usage of advanced digital techniques, as the Access databases we are using for our museum work do not come up to world standards. Most musea worldwide are using so called MUSEUM PLUS database programme, which has been developed specially for this puropse and is highly satisfactory. Czech Museums, however, use various home made (i.e. Czech) and mutually incompatible programmes. The National Gallery, to give an example, uses the so-called Bach programme which has many shortcomings, as it was not developed by museum work specialists. Its operators have to drive 300 km from the city of Olomouc to Prague in order to make any single improvement to the operation of the central server in Prague, because the network often collapses and frustrates the practical work of the museum curators. For these many reasons, the National Gallery still does not have a complex database of its collections, and the complete data of the National Gallery collections have not been loaded even after seven years of contract with the Bach database creators.[14] As a consequence, at present we cannot offer any public access to our art funds, or even basic visual information about our collections, through web pages. For this reason, we welcome the possibility this symposium on Digital Humanities opens up for our edification in advanced technologies applied for networking our collections.

Thank you for your attention.

Commentary to PowerPoint presentation on Japanese art Collections in the Czech Republic:

The Náprstek Museum of Asian, African and American cultures
The Náprstek Museum of Asian, African and American cultures in Prague nowadays keeps holdings exceeding 120,000 objects, often ethnographical, so that it can be compared to the Minpaku Museum in Ósaka. To the contrary of Minpaku, the NpM has no permanent exhibition spaces for Japanese art these years (since the floods of 2002) and Japanese art is presented in limited portions in the form of temporary exhibitions.The Asian Section of the NpM holds about 48,000 artefacts. The bulk of the NpM Japanese collection of 20, 000 pieces , however, comes from a single resource. Over 8, 000 Japanese sculptures, prints, paintings and decorative works of art were transferred to the museum from the private collection of Czech greatest collector of Japanese art, the travel book writer Joe Hloucha (1881-1957) between 1955-57.

The National Gallery in Prague:
The National Gallery in Prague: Out of the 5 754 Japanese artefacts in the Collection of Oriental Art, only ten exceptional Japanese artworks of the NG collection, starting from the oldest ones, are mentioned further (Fig 38-47). A rare Muromachi jidai Emma daió or a large gilt altarpiece zushi with Kannon, Jizó and painted Shittennó guardians represents Buddhist wooden sculpture. In the Buddhist painting part there is a well-preserved Senju Kannon kakemono from Muromachi period, or a 13 meter long pair of hand-scrolls - one with a painted Buddha Shakyamuni's life story and the other containing hentaigana calligraphy on decorated background. Among secular paintings the most ancient is a Muromachi naraehon entitled Ehon wakashú with 20 sheets including 120 poems illustrated by yamato-e style motifs in fans of the Ógi no sóshi type, from the Hloucha Estate. Among ukiyoe bijin (or rather yúrei) there is finely drawn painting of a ghost of a beauty ascending from an opium smoke by Utagawa Toyoharu. Another rare piece is a byóbu with six Chinese beauties by the literati painter Suminoe Buzen. From large metalwork pieces a precious bronze sculpture representing Four Falcons on a red carved lacquer stake from the late 19th century was transferred to the NG collection from Hrubý Rohozec Castle.

Besides the two large state collections in Prague, there is a small number of about 270 Japanese artefacts from the former collections of Czech writers in the Memorial Museum of Czech Literature located in the Strahov Monastery near Prague Castle (Památník národního písemnictví). This collection contains about 260 Japanese prints from the estate of Czech literati Sigismund Bouška, Emanuel z Lešehradu and Jiří Karásek ze Lvovic with some fine early hosoban prints.[15]

The next pages show several samples of the aristocratic collections of oriental art located in various chateaux and castles in the Czech Republic, such as Hluboká, Lednice, Sychrov, Mnichovo Hradištĕ, Veltrusy, Kynžvart etc. You will find also the Zalužany Chateau, which will become a seat of the permanent exhibition of the National Gallery entitled Oriental Treasures for European Courts that will be open in June 2009.

BRNO collection:
BRNO collection : The Industrial museum in Brno, the capital of Moravia, was founded in 1873, but the Museum's building was finished in 1883 .The neo-renaissance building was modelled after the Kunstgewerbe Museum (Museum for Arts and Crafts) in Vienna and the inner dispositions with large exhibition rooms surrounding the high central loggia followed the then prevailing ideas of Gottfried Semper. The Moravian Gallery in Brno, as it is known now, holds a collection of 1,460 pieces of Oriental art, but none of these is shown in the permanent exhibition at present. There are 700 items invented as Japanese, collection of tsuba accounts for 280 pieces, lacquerware for about 50 items. There are many fine porcelain and ceramic artefacts. One of the rarities is a set of three Japanese print albums (E 2641- 2643) kept in the museum's library. They are labelled as Azuma nishikie and each contains from 170 to 190 óban sized theatrical prints in a perfectly well preserved condition. The first one (E 2641) contains 61 rare diptychs and 14 triptychs, 1 pentaptych and 1 single sheet by Toyokuni I, dating from 1812-1815 - all finely printed and with beautifully maintained colours. The second (E 2643) includes 170 kabuki stage views by Kunisada from the Gototei and Kóchóró signature period, dating between 1832-35 (34 triptychs, 27 diptychs). And the third one is dated between 1852-57 and releases a chronicle of Nakamura-za performances in Edo in 190 óban designs by Kunisada from Toyokuni III period. Besides these prints there are a few single sheets, but the Brno collection still waits for an adequate assessment as none of the present day curators specializes in Japanese art.

LIBEREC collection:
LIBEREC collection: The second Industrial Museum in Czech lands -(which is now the North-Bohemian Museum) was founded in the town of Liberec, the seat of the 19th century textile industry in the Sudeten region. It was founded on May 9th, 1873 - one day after Industrial Museum in the capital of Moravia, Brno. The direct inspiration for establishing the museum came from the Industrial Museum in Vienna (Ósterreichische Museum für Kunst und Industrie), the capital of Austro-Hungarian Empire which was founded in 1864, boasting priority within the complete continental Europe. Over 200 best Japanese artefacts of the museum became part of the Oriental Art Collection of the National Gallery in Prague in the 1950 catalogue of the Liberec Museum includes 154 pieces of Japanese art - 48 ceramics, enamels, metal objects, textiles and woven baskets. These represent the most relevant examples of Japanese art in Liberec collections. Besides these, 45 woodblock printed books and albums have been rediscovered in the library of the museum recently, containing mostly Meiji kachóga and textile ornament samples and several early 20th century printed books on Japanese art.

PILSEN collection:
PILSEN collection: In 1878 the members of the Union of Friends of Czech Science and Literature in Pilsen decided to build an Industrial Museum which is known as the West-Bohemian Museum in Pilsen today. They nominated architect Josef Škorpil as the first Director of the Museum, who became the author of the splendid architecture of the Museum (one of the most beautiful samples of art nouveau architecture in Bohemia) which was completed between 1897- 1900.The total number of artefacts today cover more than 120,000 objects. Oriental art is represented by high quality collections of about 1,500 artefacts from all Asian territories.

The Japanese collection in Pilsen is not too extensive, there are several decorative Tokugawa period Buddhist statues, including a complete set of Amida Trinity and a large altarpiece zushi with a complete set of icons executed in multicoloured and gilt engravings. There is also a nice set of ceramics and porcelain ware and several remarkable lacquer pieces. The collection of ceramics and porcelain contains several nice 19th century pieces, and another neat set is formed by wickerwork. There are also several Meiji kakemono with geisha figures in a poor condition. The most precious part of the Pilsen collection, however, is the folder with about 300 Japanese prints.[16] In contrary to the usual bakumatsu and Meiji period ukiyoe prints that are so often found in other collections, the Pilsen museum can boast of many superior prints of the Golden Age of nishikie, dating from ca 1770 to 1830, all in an excellent condition.[17]

OPAVA museum:
OPAVA museum: Major collection of Japanese artefacts is held by the Industrial Museum in Opava, which was one of the first institutions to get involved with art already in the early 19th century. It was founded in 1814. Its new building was completed in 1882. The leading figure in Opava was Dr. Edmund Braun - a well-learned scholar and collector of gothic and renaissance art He was a follower of the ideas coined by Prof. Brinckmann from Hamburg and he was influenced by him to collect tsuba. In his public lectures he advocated Japanese art and he organized a large exhibition of Japanese prints brought by Emil Orlik in his museum in Opava as early as in 1902.

Besides the six large collections mentioned above there are many more minor public collections in the Czech Republic. There is a collection of ca 150 oriental pieces held by the City Museum in Moravská Třebová, which was scrutinized by Dr. Boháčková from the Náprstek Museum. A small collection of 80 Japanese prints (described by Dr. Honcoopová from the NG) belongs to the City Museum of Olomouc, the former capital of Moravia. The heritage of two Czech private collectors - the poet Sigismund Bouška and the architect Jan Letzel are partially preserved in the City Archive in Náchod.

Notes

[1]

The Náprstek Museum was constructed in the centre of Prague at the same time as the splendid gallery and concert hall Rudolfinum (finished in 1885) and even earlier than the huge representative building of the National Museum on top of the Wenceslas Square (1891), or the building of the Arts and Crafts Museum in Prague (1899), which was founded as late as in 1885. This Prague industrial museum collected Japanese art, too, but it was transferred to the National Gallery's Oriental Art Collection between 1958-1967, when the Museum of Arts and Crafts became - temporarily - a part of the National Gallery.

[2]

Dr. Boháčková was overloaded with curatorial work, but she could publish only short, eight- page leaflets to accompany her frequent monthly exhibitions. Due to the lack of funds, the NpM published only three large studies by her: on katagami, on Kuniyoshi warrior prints and on netsuke.

[3]

NpM has recently published a series of CD catalogues with representative selections of the following Japanese art categories: netsuke and okimono, katana and tsuba, cloisonné (also Chinese), historical photographs from the collection of Joe Hloucha and photographs and biography of Joe Hloucha. Ósaka Prints is the last in the series.

[4]

Annals of the Náprstek Museum has been published on annual basis for 40 years, since 1962 (with one gap of 7 years). Czech and foreign scholars contribute articles aimed towards historical, archaeological, art critical, musicological, and anthropological aspects of non-European cultures written exclusively in English, German, French or Spanish. It is the only scholarly publication in the Czech Republic systematically devoted to the non-European cultures and their heritage.

[5]

The National Gallery keeps using the obsolete term Oriental Art Collection because we do not want to use the negative adjective Non-European for describing our collections and there is no shorter term suitable for our collections that comprise Asian, African and Latin American art.

[6]

From the pre-Edo period NG posesses, only one Momoyama screen, two late Muromachi naraehon and one Senju Kannon hanging scroll, two sculptures - one of Nió and one of Emma daió. The rest is dated from Edo, Meiji with about 500 20th century artefacts. Modern Japanese art made in the western vein is collected by the Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art of the National Gallery - there you can find about 15 paitings by Foujita, Oka, Dejima etc.

[7]

Our young colleague Markéta Hánová, the curator of Japanese art in the NG, spent half a year in public libraries tracking down a detailed account of all exhibitions of non-European art that took place on Czech territory between 1850 and 2007 and she came to the astonishing number of 600 exhibitions, both large and small. Her exhaustive list was published as a part of her dissertation (Charles University, Prague, 2008).

[8]

The last title written by Lubor Hájek, Figural Art of East Asia, was published posthumously in 2008.

[9]

During the last decade, the Japan Foundation supported production costs of the following 8 titles on Japanese art written by Czech curators and printed either in Czech or in English: 1) Books Carved into the Wood (Honcoopová, 1997) 2) Japanese Porcelain (Suchomel 1998) 3) Japanese Illustrated Books (Honcoopová, Koike, Rezner, 1998) 4) Japanese Lacquer (Suchomel, Suchomelova, 2002) 5) Japanese Period Photographs (Suchomel, 2005) 6) Monograph on Kunisada prints (Honcoopová, 2005) 7) Figural Painting of East Asia (Hájek, 2008) 8) Monograph on Joe Hloucha´s Collection of Japanese Art (Kraemerová, 2008).

[10]

As interpreters, young graduates from Japanese Studies at Charles University can earn the monthly salary of a state museum employee in three to five days.

[11]

In the Náprstek Museum it is Dr. Alice Kraemerová, at the Applied Arts Univesity it is Dr. Filip Suchomel and in the National Gallery there are Dr. Honcoopová and a young collegue Dr. Markéta Hánová who gained her degree last year and has been on her maternity leave for the last four years.

[12]

Morover, the history of arts in general is the dominion of women and the few female adepts in the field of Japanese art who appeared and were trained for the work at foreign universities either stayed abroad or at home with their families. For this reason, we would welcome male students who would get the proper schooling in the field.

[13]

The oriental collections at various Czech castles and chateaux are gradually scrutinized by curators of the two central state institutions. Our colleague Dr. Filip Suchomel, a former curator of both the Náprstek Museum and the National Gallery, has been systematically working on a map of Japanese artefacts in various Czech aristocratic collections upon a basis of a 15 year long state grant which is planned to end in 2010. He, with the help of his wife, has finished a record on Japanese porcelain, lacquer, photography- he is recently working on Japanese cloisonné. Dr. Honcoopová keeps record of Japanese sculpture, painting and graphic art. Dr. Klimtová is working on Tibetan art and textile, Dr. Černá on Chinese applied arts, Dr. Mullerová on Vietnamese art, Dr. Pospíšilová a Dr. Nováková on Islamic objects.

[14]

The Oriental Art Collection database is loaded completely, but if you want to have a look at our ukiyoe prints through our Vademecum web wiever, for instance, Publishers appear intead of Artists and there is no English and no Japanese transcription available in the programme as the whole system is not suitable for specific data needed for describing of Asian art.

[15]

These prints were shown in a special exhibition prepared by Dr. Hájek from the National Gallery in 1972, and Kódansha also catalogued them in the Japanese art in the European museums series published in 1995.

[16]

The Japanese prints collection from the West-Bohemian Museum in Pilsen was sorted out and scrutinized by Dr. Honcoopová and published under the title The Goden Age of Ukiyoe in the National Gallery in 2004.

[17]

The structure of Pilsen Japanese prints collection is quite extraordinary: The early nishikie prints by Torii Kiyomitsu, Kiyonaga, Harunobu and Koryúsai are represented by one sheet each. As a great surprise, there are 24 Utamaro bijinga and 3 prints by his pupils, 28 yakusha hosoban by the Katsukawa School, mostly Shunshó, Shunkó, Shunsen and Shun'ei. There are 33 remarkable Eishi óban prints! The early Utagawa School - 4 Toyoharu, 1 Toyohiro and 50 Toyokuni I, 39 sheets represent Kunisada, all from Gototei and Kóchóró signature period. Then there are the more common repertoire artists, such as 16 Kuniyoshi, 14 Hokusai, 25 Hiroshige and 10 prints from the Kansai region. 6 excellent bijin prints of Yanagawa Shigenobu from the Ósaka Shinmachi nerimono series are especially worth mentioning for their superior, surimono-like printing quality.

CHART OF JAPANESE ARTS AND CRAFTS IN MAJOR PUBLIC COLLECTIONS IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC+ 2 neighbboughrs
NOTE: items marked by * are published in catalogue or on CD, red color marks important parts bold letters mark total numbers in the given category	National Gallery in Prague - Oriental Art Collection - NG	Naprstek Museum of Asian, African and American Cult. - NpM	Liberec - LIB North-Bohemian Museum	Brno - MG Moravian Gallery	Pilsen - PILS West Bohemian Museum	Budapest - Ferenz Hopp Museum	Krakow - Manggha
ASIAN ART COLLECTIONS	ca 12,500 (African 1,015 pc)	48,000	minor	ca 1,460	ca 1,500	20,000	12,000
JAPANESE ART TOTAL	5,754 Japanese	20,000	ca 200	ca 700	ca 800	ca 7,000	bulk Jap*
two-dimensional art	(Vm index)
PAINTINGS total	283	700	0		10	ca 400	178
screens (yamatoe, Tosa, Kanó, harimaze byobu, lacquer)	8	18					2
landscapes	19						5
flowers and birds	45
*figures Buddhist	8						9
*figures sumie	9
*figures Edo ukiyoe	10						3
*figures Meiji	18				10		6
haiga, zenga	7
folk painting - Ótsue	3
yóga modern classics:(Fujita, Dejima, Oka, etc)	22 (12 oils in NG Modern Art Coll.)
postwar paintings	157 (incl. hanga)
DRAWINGS - sketches, sheets	146
sketchbooks - gachó	33
CALLIGRAPHY	216		0	0	0
classical	8 (4 kakejiku)
modern	208 kakejiku,
GRAPHICS - total (incl.books)	3,912 (*selection)	5,600 (*selection)	few	530+	360	ca 2,000	4,600**
A. Classical schools (bunjinga, Kishi, Shijó, Maruyama, nanga..)	158				0		only few
B, ukiyoe EDO
a) sumizurie,hosoban 17th C	25				40
b) hosoban 1700-1770	66
c) nishikie Harunobu	63				0
Koryúsai	28
Katsukawa-ha	43				28		260
d) nishikie - golden age late 18th	347				ca 160
Kiyonaga	20				1
Utamaro I, II, Kikumaro etc.	59				24
Eishi, Eishó, Chóki	23				33
Toyoharu, Toyohiro	5				5
Toyokuni	95			170	50
e) late Edo, 19th century Bunka -	1,732 meishoe*, kachóga*				ca 140		3,000
Eisan, Eizen	63				32
Hokusai	191				14
Kunisada	608 (Kunisada*)			360	39
Kuniyoshi	233	(mushae*)			16
Hiroshige	335				25		2,000+*
f) surimono	59				6		300
g) Osaka	502	*536			10		many
C. ukiyoe MEIJI	688;				30
BOOKS -	*695 (660 Hloucha)	78	45		20	ca 200	150
A. manuscript naraehon, otogibanashi, ryokóki	6
B. classical schools	83
C. ukiyoe black and white 17-18c	28
nishikie golden age late 18th	33
Ósaka	105		1
ukiyoe late Edo - 19th century	200	14	9
Meiji	170;	64	35
PHOTOGRAPHY historical	Chinese only	*525 (Hloucha, all)
Three-dimensional art -	Vp index
SCULPTURE	127	155			14 good	18	small coll,
Buddhist large	13	25				fine
budsudan- zushi, kamidana	4	*50 large+20 small			1 large zushi
smaller statues	110	60				fine
Decorative art Vu index	1,277				200
WOOD	142
masks	5	100				ca 900	few
LACQUER	194 (*select)	*730 (100 rare)	11	50	15		several
inró	3	58	8				68
METAL	501		74		20		1,036 pcs.
swords	8 (burned)	*220 (25 rare)					52
tsuba	288	*510 (all on CD)	23	280			752
sword fittings - kozuka, fuchi, kashira	13	48 kozuka 76 fuchi, kashira	10				107
archery, lances, bows, quivers, arrows	0	209					30
yoroi, jingasa, helmets, stirrups.	2	250					55
kanamono - small bronze pieces	100	90	27				several
bronzes - large burners, lanterns, vases, plates, pots	50						several
shippo - cloisonné, late Edo, Meiji, early 20th C.	40	170	22				several
CERAMICS total	453 (*selection)	1,600 (*selection)	60	50	60	ca 1,000	large
pottery	44	400	10 stonew.
porcelain	409	1,200	38			230
TEXTILE	45	ca 2,000	9				40-60
kimono	3	200 (obi 30)	2
tenugui	3	90
embroidery	3	5 screens,
textile swatches, mihon	3	1,276	3 books of		30	200
katagami	40	*852 (*complete)	many				200
textile pattern books (hinagatachó)	36		7
IVORY, STONE, JADE
netsuke (incl. wood)	49	*180				*ca 500	few
okimono	5	*100				*ca 230
kagamibuta	2	*14
ETHNOGRAPHIC OBJECTS
furniture (incl. carved and inlayed decor. screens Meiji)	2	1 apothecary (3319)
toys	200	600
hinagata sets of ningyo	2	several
bats hagoita	0	16
panels (kanban, ema)	0	68
umbrellas kasa	0	90
stands (inlaid, shibayama)	0	28
wickerware bamboo caskets	37	176	59
fans (ógi, uchiwa, souvenir type)	14	220 (incl. photo)					several
inlaid boxes	1	few
musical istruments	1	ca 10
kiseru	1	100					several
ojime	6	120
combs	10	21
hairpins	3	182
zóri, geta	2	many					few
agricultural utensils	0	48
Ainu	0	2
Ryúkyú	2	50
	NG Praha	NpM Praha	LIB	MG Brno	PILS	HOPP Bud.	MANGGHA

NG - Collection of Oriental Art, part of the National Gallery in Prague, founded 1951 by Lubor Hajek (1921-2000), www.ngprague.cz
NpM - Naprstek Museum of Asian, African and American cultures, National Museum, P, founded 1863 by Vojta Naprstek (1826-1894), Prominent Japanese art collection of Joe Hloucha (1881-1957), www.nm.cz
LIB - North-Bohemian Museum in Liberec, founded 1873, patronage Heinrich von Liebieg (1839- 1904), www.muzeumlb.cz MG - Moravian Gallery in Brno, founded 1873, info@moravska-galerie.cz
PILS - West Bohemian Museum in Pilsen, founded 1878 by Josef Škorpil (1856-1931), info@zcm.cz
HOPP - Museum of Ferenc Hopp in Budapest, founded 1919, founder Ferenc Hopp (1830-1919), www.hoppmuzeum.hu
MANGGHA - National Museum in Cracow, founded 1880, since 1994, Manggha Centre of Japanese art and technology, a collection of 15,000 artefacts obtained from Felix Manggha Jasieński (1861-1929), ca 6,500 Japanese items, ** in 1945 about 500 prints were stolen by Nazi, muzeum@manggha.krakow.pl