Thursday 16 January, 2025
6:30pm GMT - 7:30pm GMT
This event is organised by the Japan Foundation in partnership with the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures and Japan House London.
For our January Third Thursday Lecture, we are delighted to announce that the Japan Foundation London will be hosting a talk welcoming Professor Simon Kaner, Executive Director of the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures, to deliver a special talk on ‘How Japanese Arts and Cultures Can Make Us Happier‘. This follows the news of the Sainsbury Institute receiving the Japan Foundation Award 2024 for their work in helping to promote Japanese Studies and Japanese arts and cultures.
In person at Japan House London and online via Zoom.
Free and open to all, booking essential via the Japan Foundation website.
In person registration available here.
Livestream registration available here.
To check your time zone conversion if you are joining from outside the UK, click here.
If you have limited access to the internet but would still like to view the lecture from Norwich, please email sisjac@sainsbury-institute.org or call us on +44 (0) 1603 597507 to book to attend our livestream from 64 The Close.
Speaker
Professor Simon Kaner (Executive Director, Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures)
About the Talk
Artistic and cultural activity is intrinsic to being human. Engaging with such activity, whether visiting a museum, gallery or heritage site, attending or taking part in a performance, or creating one’s own works, improves our well-being. Taking examples from a range of recent projects undertaken by the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures at venues including Stonehenge, the British Museum and an old shoe factory in Norwich, this talk will explore how engaging with Japanese arts and cultures makes us happier. It will also consider how we can best exploit the Digital Revolution to bring what the Chief Executive of Arts Council England, Darren Henley, describes as the ‘Arts Dividend’ to new global audiences.
About the Speaker
Professor Simon Kaner, MA (Cantab.) PhD, FSA, is Executive Director of the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures, where he is also the Head of the Centre for Archaeology and Heritage. He is Founding Director of the Centre for Japanese Studies at the University of East Anglia. He has curated a number of exhibitions, including at the British Museum, the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge and the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich. His current research projects include Global Perspectives on British Archaeology and The Shinano-Chikuma River Project: investigating the historic environments of Japanese longest river drainage. In 2011 he was awarded the 10th Miyasaki Eiichi Togariishi Jomon Prize.
The Third Thursday Lecture series is funded by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation and Yakult UK.