Museum curators are usually in the position of assessing an artist's career, but rarely turn that same critical lens upon themselves. However, the exhibition "My Favorites-Index of a Certain Collection: Selections from the MoMAK Collection," which opened to the public on March 24 at the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, was an opportunity to do just that for Shinji Kohmoto. Kohmoto has been employed at MoMAK since 1981, first as a curator and then, since 2006, as chief curator. Retiring this April, Kohmoto has turned his parting exhibition into an oblique retrospective of his own storied career and a fascinating glimpse into the inner workings of the museum system.

"My Favorites" takes as its point of departure the museum's practice of categorizing works in its collection by type, such as painting, sculpture or photography. In addition to these conventional classifications, the museum also has a catchall classification of "non-category," which was fittingly added in the fiscal year 1978-79 after MoMAK acquired a version of Marcel Duchamp's portable retrospective "La boite-en-valise" (1931-41/1955-68), a leather case filled with miniature reproductions of the artist's representative works.

While the idea of the non-category suggests an antiquated system struggling to keep pace with developments in contemporary art, Kohmoto told The Japan Times that over the years he found in it a sanctuary. "Museums are by nature interested in categorizing objects so that they can be precisely tracked and grouped into a knowledge-based framework," Kohmoto said. "But I worry that in doing so we rob artworks of their authentic aura.