2 Report: International Symposium

As part of this project, the second program, "Art to Live International Symposium," was held on Saturday, November 30, 2024, at Kyoto City University of Arts.

In the first session, Tom Di Maria of the Creative Growth Art Center, which recently celebrated its 50th anniversary, was interviewed by Yukiko Koide, with whom he has had a friendship with for many years. Among the six topics they discussed in a conversation which introduced several of Creative Growth’s practices, one was the exhibition, Creative Growth: The House That Art Built, held at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2024. As Koide stated in her introduction, "Tom often says, 'We're doing art. We're people in the art world.'" Creative Growth's approach of presenting artists with disabilities as acknowledged artists, as well as contemporary art, was discussed in a very natural way. This approach reflected the depth of contemporary art in the United States.

In the second session, Kenjiro Hosaka (Director of the Shiga Museum of Art), Kaoru Ouchi (Curator at the Tokyo Shibuya Koen-dori Gallery), and Hiroki Yamamoto (Cultural Studies Scholar, Associate Professor at Jissen Women's University), who have focused on exhibitions and research highlighting the expressions of people previously excluded from the mainstream of art, joined Tom Di Maria and Yukiko Koide for a discussion on efforts in Japan to evaluate the works of people with disabilities as contemporary art. Each project introduced by the panelists represents a valuable development in this field in Japan. While the recognition of the works of people with disabilities as contemporary art in Japan is still developing, several key points were highlighted. These included the initiation of curatorial experiments involving mainstream art professionals, the potential for interdisciplinary approaches beyond the art world, the role of education, and the fundamental importance of engaging with the works themselves. The discussion provided valuable insights for the future development of this field.