Institutional Aspects of the Export of Ukrainian art during the Stagnation Era: The Activity of Y. Nakamura and the Gekkoso Gallery ( Japan)

Abstract

Within the study of a mechanism of exporting the works by Ukrainian artists during the 1970s and the first half of the 1980s to Japan, the paper covers the activities of Gekkoso Gallery (Tokyo) and its president Mrs. Yoko Nakamura. The institutional aspects of the export of official Soviet (and specifically Ukrainian) art, as well as the hierarchical relations of the organizations involved in the process, are revealed on this example of cooperation with Gekkoso Gallery. Amounts and regulations of export through Gekkoso Gallery were highlighted on the basis of the study of the Union of Artists the Ukrainian SSR archives. The exhibition and trade activities of the gallery are placed into a broad cultural context that allows to understand the peculiarities of Soviet-Japanese relations in the abovementioned period.