The overall aim of this project is to examine the collaborative nature (gassaku) of 19th century kamigata visual arts focusing on surimono, illustrated books and paintings in the British Museum, Kansai Univ. and a private collection. Combining art and literature research methodologies with digital humanities technologies, the objectives of the project are to analyse the role of the arts in 19th-century society, to create a sustainable open database of kamigata artworks and artist/producer names available for research, to host exhibitions in Kyoto and London, and to produce significant publications.
The particular objectives of the previous two ARC applications were to create a research corpus of unrecorded material: first to digitize the Scott Johnson kamigata surimono collection (now acquired by the British Museum) of about 2000 items, create a database and input basic metadata into the ARC database from these surimono. The second was to negotiate with Paul Berry to digitize his large unrecorded kamigata painting collection, and to begin the process of photographing the works and inputing metadata into the ARC database. The project has achieved the first two objectives. This 2021 application is for funds to complete the digitization of the Paul Berry painting collection and input basic metadata into the ARC database.
