Q: What kind of a project is TOKYO CRAFTS & DESIGN 2012?
In the Metropolis of Tokyo, 41 items are designated as traditional craft products. These craft products and skills have been nurtured over a long period of time since the Edo Period. Although these industries and skills have gradually been declined, there are some people and designers at home and abroad who are interested in these cultures and traditional crafts. The objectives of this project is to create new traditional craftwork through "collaborations" between craftsmen who need a product idea that suits a contemporary lifestyle and designers who know a charm of crafts and want to apply it to their ideas and designs. (continued in the right column)
In this project, art directors, intellectual property advisers, museum shop and curators of this museum think together and create museum products that will be "traditions of the future." This project is one of support activities for creatin artworks, with which "the museum that attaches importance to tradition and infuses new breath into art" will be realized. The Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum aims to become "a gateway to art" through supporting creative activities of these traditional crafts and designs, selling the products at the museum shop and making them available to many people.
The new traditional crafts production project (TOKYO CRAFTS & DESIGN 2012) is one of the projects that were carried out in commemoration of the renewal and reopening of the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. Now, the developed products are only sold at the museum shop.
