13、Educational collaboration between museums for humanities and sciences and a zoo “Animal tour in Ueno Park” I: The trial of cultural heritage education at Tokyo National Museum

 

Yukiko KOJIMA

Tokyo National Museum

 

The Tokyo National Museum has carried out a collaborative event “Animal Tour in Ueno Park” with Ueno Zoological Gardens and the National Museum of Nature and Science since 2007. The event commemorates International Museum day (May 18) established by ICOM. We pick one specific animal category every year, such as primates, lions, and elephants. Each museum and zoo introduces the same animal from different points of view in the tour, such as behavior, structure of bones, and evolution.
The Tokyo National Museum exhibits a thematic exhibition based on the animal for this event. We introduce how the animal is interpreted in traditional art and history in Japan and Asia. This year, we also added photos of monkeys similarly posed as cultural properties to encourage visitors to appreciate the objects.
The collaboration with different institutions delivers significant advantages to us, such as establishing different views to appreciate art objects which we have never considered in an art and history museum. The events also help to bring in first-time visitors to our museum.
The point of difficulty with this collaboration is deciding the appropriate animal theme, especially with the limited collection of our museum.