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Reiko Tomii traces the legacy of the rental gallery system, which offered autonomy and support to artists in 1960s Japan.

Collectivism is a lively phenomenon in a rapidly globalizing world of contemporary art today. Artists' groups proliferate in many regions of the world, calling into question the modern myth of originality and individualism. These collectives actively explore new possibilities of expression and operation, while aspiring to break down the conventional boundaries that have long conditioned the production of art and its distribution in society. The global scope of artists' collectives makes the study of collectivism an integral part of “world art history,” providing a critical perspective in understanding the distinctive local developments of modernity and postmodernity worldwide. This issue focuses on twentieth-century Japan to examine some critical issues concerning collectivism and art, including the impetuses and origins of collectivism, the evolution of modern and contemporary collectivism, and the ways collectivism shapes artists' practices of making and showing art in an environment they operate. In particular, this introduction proposes a periodization of kindai (modern), gendai (contemporary), and kontemporarī (“contemporary” in a global sense) based on three different operational modes of collectivism and explores how modern collectivism that centered on bijutsu dantai (art associations) helped create the art establishment and disseminate the idea of modernism among the general public, while fostering vanguard experimentalism that foresaw the collectivism of postwar art.

In January of this year, the exhibition The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860–1989 opened at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. This ambitious exhibition is one of several recent projects aimed at rethinking modernism, in this case by tracing the complex relations between American artists and Asian philosophical traditions and cultural forms. We invited five scholars to engage in a critical conversation probing the issues raised by the exhibition, using its historically framed bias toward Japan as a starting point. Seth McCormick facilitated the discussion with Reiko Tomii. Alexandra Munroe, the curator of the exhibition, generously provided a response.

The following is an edited compilation of conversations with the director of the Tate Modern, Lars Nittve; the former head of exhibitions, Iwona Blazwick; the curators Donna De Salvo and Emma Dexter; four guest curators Geeta Kapur, Olu Oguibe, Reiko Tomii, and Paolo Venancio Filho held during the press previews of the exhibition Century City: Art and Culture in the Modern Metropolis (February 1–April 29, 2001).1

The infrared absorption spectra of the two aminopyridazines were observed and compared with those of the three aminopyridines and aniline. The amino-form of the two aminopyridazines was confirmed, and at the same time the structural similarity of 4-aminopyridazine with 4-aminopyridine was shown by their infrared spectra. Similarly, the spectrum of 3-aminopyridazine was close to that of 2-aminopyridine. In addition, the correlation between the position and the nature of substituent was discussed.