Correspondences
Mark Dion & Yoshiaki Nishino　

October 8th 2002

Dear Dr. Nishino,

I wanted to let you know how pleased I am that you have enthusiatically endorsed the exhibition title: MICROCOSMOGRAPHIA.

As you already recognized the title is borrowed from the popular anatomical textbook by physician and anatomist James I Helkiah Crook, published in 1615. He intended his work as an anatomical compendium useful to theologians, philosophers, poets, painters and to "all artificiers and handy-craftsman".

I sincerely hope that the University of Tokyo Museum Project will reach such richly diverse audience.

While anatomy is witin the scope of our project, we will doubtlessly expand well beyond Crooke's field, which I believe is the true implication of the title for the purpose, all the best.

Mark Dion

October 11th 2002, Tokyo

Dear Mark,

Thank you very much for your original postcard The large figure of the tiny insect is wonderful, and evokes for me the passion for collecting.

In your fax to Mr.Iida you suggested that you will continue mailing postcards on your trip. This idea of a series of works seems very interesting. The postcards will become personal diaries, which make it possible not only to trace the itinerary of your trip, but also to understand your way of seeing the natural world. While Albrecht Durersketched the world he observed during his transalpine journey in watercolor, Italian Futurists used original postcards for their ideological propaganda. But I have never seen a Natural History that relied on the international postal system.

Also I understand that you have been staying in a hotel in Digne in the south of France, near the source of the Durance River. The area has a special meaning for me, since when I was young I lived in the Provence for more than three years in the beginning of 1970's. Nature in the raw in this region is a source of much personal nostalgia: the shapes of shadows and crags, the smells of herbs, the flutter of bees....

you must have visited the Jean-Henri Fabre Memorial Museum, not so far from Montpellier. Its tiny studio, exhibiting his collection of thousands of entornological specimens, and his extraordinary mushroom illustrations were among my favorites. Every time l stood in front of the collections,cabinets, I was impressed by the extraordinary passion of Fabre, "a giant among the insect men" according to your Lexicon, for collecting and classifying all the creations of the natural world. This small but dense space, all of whose contents have been systematized by the Linnaean taxonomy, seems to me a type of MICROCOSMOGRAPHlA of the period.

We are planning a meeting on October 15th at which we will try to categorize our photos. You will soon receive a parcel at home in Pennsylvania.

We all are looking forward to hearing from you.
Best wishes,
Sincere|y yours, YoshiakiNISHINO