On July 5, Danish scholar Dr. Simon Høffding visited the Tokyo Fuji Art Museum to give a lecture on aesthetics entitled, “Passivity and Participation in the Art Museum—A Phenomenological Exposition.” Some 40 people, including students from nearby Soka University, attended the lecture on one of the methodologies of western philosophy.
Currently teaching at the University of Copenhagen’s Department of Psychology, Dr. Høffding is an expert on phenomenology, aesthetics and musicianship, among other disciplines. One of the unique features of Dr. Høffding’s was to engage the audience in an interactive discussion even as he continued his lecture while standing before a number of works on display at TFAM’s permanent exhibition, “From the Renaissance to the 20th Century—500 Years of Western Paintings,” particularly before Dr. Paul Alexandre by the Italian painter Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920).
