根付 Netsuke Hands on Subverting Untouchability Through the Digital

Abstract

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, one of the oldest and largest museums in Canada, features over 6,000 works in its Asian Art collection. Many works included in the museum’s early collection history were small scale “exotic” objects, whose portable size afforded rapid consumption, wide circulation, and relative affordability. Such small objects were also desirable because they were easily manipulated by their western collectors, who could theoretically encapsulate an entire culture in the palms of their hands. Attempts to illustrate the very tactile experience that brought miniature “exotica” into our institution are challenging to replicate in the museum space, where objects are often kept untouched. However, a recent digital initiative at the MMFA strives to mimic the lost pleasure of tactility, as well as to address the physical limitations surrounding the display of miniature objects in a museum, in an attempt to subvert canonical museum hierarchies by rendering visible the often-invisible. The development of a web progressive application integrating three-dimensional photogrammetry allows for viewers to engage with small-scale objects in closer detail and even “handle” them. This paper examines the first iteration of the project, which focuses on a group of Japanese netsuke, small ivory sculptures originally used as cord-stoppers (toggles) during the Edo period. It examines how the use of responsive interfaces can illuminate important qualities of netsuke including their tactility, materiality, and craftsmanship, which would otherwise be left obscured by a traditional museum display.