HONG KONG
RULES OF FREEDOM
FREEDOM OF RULES
INTRO
I'm about to experience the first showing of On Kawara at a public institution since the ten-year moratorium on such exhibitions following his death. The show, presented at Tai Kwun, Hong Kong, closed last month (August, 2025) but I'm going to pretend it's still open. I can do this because of the excellent archiving of the show as found on Tai Kwun's website in particular.
One of the show's co-curators is Hou Hanru, a respected art critic, writer and curator based in Paris and Rome. The kind of blue chip art professional - he is an advisor for numerous prestigious cultural institutions - that one would expect One Million Years Foundation to entrust with the legacy of On Kawara.
In a curator's video to be found on the Tai Kwun site, Hanru introduces us to Kawara. "He's a very simple, very nice person, a gentleman who was very playful, very open." I think that's dead right. The curator goes on to successfully complicate matters by adding, "He is an artist of artists, meaning he is a model for many, many artists."
I'm up for this, I really am. Are you, dear reader? Then let's go.
ONE
Reproduced with the forbearance, I hope, of Explorehongkong
The show is divided into four sections (see below), the above pic having been taken of a corner of section II, looking down towards the bottom of the diagram from the midpoint of a line drawn between I and III. 
Reproduced with the forbearance, I hope, of Tai Kwun.
Section 1 is called 'The Open System'. The largest box (towards the bottom of the left-hand side of the above diagram; towards the back of the room in the photo below) represents a glass cube in which, at designated times, two volunteers sit and read from Million Years Past. The smaller square beside it is actually two vitrines which contain a full set of Million Years Past and Million Years Future, with one of the volumes from each set open at a page at random. 
Reproduced with the forbearance, I hope, of Tai Kwun.
This vast stretch of time into the past and the present is juxtaposed with products from On Kawara's everyday activities in the intervening decade, the 1980s. Thus on glass-protected tabletops there are 'I GOT UP' cards, sometimes presented vertically so that both sides of the card can be seen if you move around, at other times lying flat so that one is viewing either the message side or the picture side, but not both. The rest of the space is filled with 'I WENT' maps , 'I MET' lists and 'I READ' volumes.
A single decade's worth of 24-hour days crammed between the last million years and the next. The juxtaposition urges us to live for the day. Let's get the most we possibly can from these irreplaceable days in which we are free (subject to rules) to do what we want.
Me? It's September 4, 2025. I'm strolling around this lovely gallery in Hong Kong. I'm not hungry or tired and my mind is wide open to new ideas, and free to go anywhere. At least I like to think that it is.
The second section of the exhibition is called 'Today'. It's a large, rectangular room which has a long table standing in the middle of it. This contains the empty boxes of the Date Paintings that are on the walls. The set-up is engagingly simple. On one end wall is the size 'H' Date, MAY 1, 1987, one of only eleven canvases that On Kawara completed at such vast size. Made in New York as all the size H paintings were. It's a painting which I've discussed at length in this essay because of a strange link with Donald Trump.
Reproduced with the forbearance, I hope, of Tai Kwun.
On the opposite wall is 'Seven Days', seven consecutive small, size 'B' Dates: 3. SEPT.1995 to 10.SEPT,1995. These were made in Cologne and were part of an exhibition there back when the Dates were painted. Indeed, the same day that On Kawara painted them in Cologne they were installed on the wall of Kolnisher Kunstverein. Almost a performance. Certainly an ever-evolving site-specific installation back in the autumn of 1995.
But this is thirty years later, and these German Dates still hold the space.
Reproduced with the forbearance, I hope, of Tai Kwun.
Along one of the long walls of this large gallery is a set of paintings collectively called 'Six Decades' . The different sizes, formats and colours of the individual canvases creates a striking effect. It strikes me that it would be hard to stand in front of them and analyse how On Kawara's lettering changed over the decades. Why? Because of several variables changing at once.
Reproduced with the forbearance, I hope, of RTHK and Tai Kwun.
Opposite these are 20 black Dates all either size A or B. This set is called 'Pacific Rim', and I have got a lot to say about this. 
Reproduced with the forbearance, I hope, of Tai Kwun.
Am I going to pretend that I am in a position to say what I have to say while still in the middle of this virtual gallery? No, you have to envisage me flying home to my computer on the western fringe of Europe in order to come up with this Google Map, see below, that shows the location of the 20 'Pacific Ring' Date Paintings.
There are actually 22 pins on that map. I haven't been able to identify where one of the Dates in the set was. In other words, the documentation available to me online is great, but not absolutely perfect.
1) 29 JULY 68 (Mexico City)
2) 8 OCT. 68 (Quito)
3) 20 OCT,68 (Santiago)
4) 12 MAR. 69 (Panama City)
5) JAN. 29, 1971 (Honolulu)
6) NOV.22, 1973 (San Francisco)
7) DEC.6,1973 (Los Angeles)
8) 3 AUG.1985 (Tokyo)
9) APRIL 6, 1990 (Sydney)
10) 24 JUL. 1991 (Hiroshima)
11) AUG.27,1991 (Anchorage)
12) SEPT.1,1992 (Seattle)
13) 13 JUIN,1995 (Toyonako)
14) 19 NOV.1998 (??????)
15) DEC.7,1999 (New Delhi)
16) 9 JAN.2000 (Tapei)
17) DEC.16,2004 (Calcutta)
18) ?????????? (Bangkok, Simantogava or Sendai)
19) 22 ENE.2007 (San José)
20) 21 FEB.2008 (Peking)
I should say that there are two Dates that I have no clear visual record of: the 17th and 18th in the row. This is the nearest I get, looking back on the 20th and 19th Pacific Rim paintings.
Reproduced with the forbearance, I hope, of RTHK.
See what I mean? The 17th and 18th Dates are a blur, even when looking through a magnifying glass.
However, under glass on the long central table there is this empty box made for the Date painted in Calcutta on December 16, 2004. 
Reproduced thanks to the understanding of the One Million Years Foundation
So I know that's up there on the wall. But I don't know if it's the 17th or 18th in the row, if you follow me.
Oh, and I'm not sure where 19 NOV. 1998 - the 14th in the sequence - was painted (in Japan probably), so that's what the purple pin represents.
Given the set-up, the only possibilities for the missing Date are:
10 DEC. 2004 (Bangkok, Thailand.)
10 FEB. 2006 (Simantogava, Japan.)
27 FEB. 2006 (Sendai, Japan.)
That's the places marked with an orange pin on the above map.
So that's the geography sorted out as best I can. Is the title of 'Pacific Rim' justifiable? Well, Honolulu is in the middle of the Pacific. Which suggests Pacific rim plus centre-point or bull's eye.
It's also true to say that Calcutta and New Delhi are well separated from the Pacific Ocean. To get from Calcutta to the Pacific Ocean would mean first sailing across the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean. Both huge stretches of water. While New Delhi is so many hundreds of miles from any sea (roughly equidistant from the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal) that if one asked a citizen of New Delhi whether the capital city of India was on the Pacific rim, the answer might come: "Only in the same way that it is on the rim of the Russian Empire."
Which brings to mind another thought. If On Kawara had seriously wanted to achieve Date Paintings all around the Pacific Rim, he would have had to make a Date Painting in Russia. Thousands of miles of the country are on the edge of the Pacific. But he didn't do that, because he didn't have a 'Pacific Rim' in mind.
By leaving out the Indian Date Paintings and including either of the two Dates made in Hong Kong or Seoul in 1978, the curators could have made a better stab at a 'Pacific Rim'. But that would have been equally pointless. There is no pure human geography as such. Human geography is informed by - and can only be understood via - biography.
Let me try and explain what I mean. On Kawara spent a few months of 1968 in Mexico and then was joined by his partner, Hiroko Hiraoka, and they explored most of the capitals of South America, plus several cities in Brazil. So Quito, Santiago and Panama (Dates 2, 3 and 4 in this set) were a small part of that exhilarating campaign.
The Honolulu painting (Date 5) was made in January of 1971 when Kawara was returning to New York from Japan. An important solo trip that may have been a test of whether he was going to be able to keep his links to his homeland, or would need to irrevocably cut them. In my opinion, it was to Asia's great good fortune that On Kawara was able to keep these links, as we'll see.
The Dates painted in San Francisco and Los Angeles (6 and 7 on the list) came at the mid-point of a road-trip from New York to the west coast and back to Manhattan that On and Hiroko made in the autumn of 1973. Again, by missing out so many of the cities that Kawara Date Painted en route across America, a misleading impression is given as to what he was up to.
What about Sydney in 1990 (number 9)? That was the fourth of four venues (Frankfurt, Chicago and Nagoya were the other three) that the show 'Again and Against' curated by Kasper König, appeared in. The show opened on April 5, 1990, and Kawara painted a Date on each of five days from April 2 to April 6 by way of site-specific celebration.
It was in the early 1980s, when the Kawaras had two very small children, that the family began to spend their summers in Japan, in part so that the children could be educated in both cultures (American and Japanese). Over the years, the artist painted in several Japanese cities (8, 13, 14, 17). He was continually flying between Japan and the main home in New York. Perhaps this was too long a flight for comfort, and so he stopped off in Anchorage (Alaska) in 1991, Seattle (Twin Peaks, is the association that comes to my mind) in 1992, and San José (Costa Rica) in 2007.
Why have the curators gone for an empty and misleading geography rather than this relevant biography? I suspect because of the difficulty that On Kawara presents through his clearly stated desire for privacy. On Kawara was indeed a very private person, but he did produce the Date Paintings, the 'I GOT UP' postcards, the 'I WENT' maps and the 'I MET' lists. There is no point in ignoring all the interconnecting information that they generously present. Indeed, it leads to strong patterns and deep insights into the unique life Kawara lived.
Hang on! - am I not taking this too seriously? As a long-term admirer of Edward Lear's nonsense verse, could I not give On-sense a go? I am going to come up with a poem that ideally should be recited aloud while standing on the roof of a Honolulu hotel and walking clockwise in a circle.
First. Let's orientate ourselves:
Now the poem:
"On lived his life on the Pacific Rim,
The constant movement kept him trim.
Quito, Bangkok, Mexico, Berlin,
'Très difficile!', keeping track of him."
Hmm. Do I mean that? Do I get away with the Berlin/French joke? Or do I prefer:
"On spent his time on the Pacific Rim,
The continuous travelling made him slim.
Quito, Bangkok, Mexico, Hiro-shim',
Tough, tough going, to keep up with him."
I expect there will be another survey of On Kawara's work hosted elsewhere in Asia soon, presumably in Tokyo. That would be an opportunity to show that from the time of the Kawaras having a house there from 1985, the artist took the opportunity of exploring Asia. Nine of the so-called 'Pacific Rim' Dates would be relevant. Plus the two of three Dates that were not included in the list of 20, but which I've already mentioned (Bangkok, Simantogava and Sendai). Plus:
DEC.23,1978 (Hong Kong)
DEC.29,1978 (Seoul)
18 JUN.1989 (Nagoya)
29 JUL.1989 (Naha)
JUNE 30, 1991 (Singapore)
7 JAN.1999 (Manila)
30 DEC. 1999 (Fuginomija)
19 FEB.2008 (Shanghai)
Making 19 in all. The shame is that because On Kawara stopped doing 'I GOT UP', 'I WENT' and 'I MET' in September 1979, there wouldn't be much to say over and above a mapping and dating exercise. There would be the stark beauty of the Dates themselves, of course.
Having said that, let's consider this map of sixteen of these Dates (excluding the Indian cities and Sydney) in what one might call south east Asia:
Interesting that Kawara never painted a Date in Viet-Nam. That country was the subject of so much 'I Read'. Indeed, newspaper stories about Viet-Nam line many of the boxes used to house Dates of the 1960s and 1970s in particular. I'm surprised the artist didn't visit Hanoi in the 1990s just to draw attention to the peace dividend.
And then, of course, there is China. The East China Sea and the South China Sea dominate this region. I don't suppose the curators of 'Freedom of Rules: Rule of Freedom' wanted to call one wall of the 'Today' room 'China Seas'. Yet it must be so hard for any administrator in Hong Kong to ignore the enormous gravitational pull of its immediate neighbour. Hong Kong is tiny (just south of Guangdong on the above map), occupying a site on the rim of giant China. As, to a lesser extent, is Taiwan. I wonder if On Kawara felt the full force of a Chinese cultural presence when he was painting his Dates in Hong Kong and Taiwan just as he must have when Dating further north on the rim of China, in Shanghai and Peking, which he didn't do until February, 2008. On the 19th of February he was Date Painting in Shanghai, and two days later he was in Peking. A Japanese-NewYorker artist of the 20th Century coming to terms with the existence of Red China. What had always separated On Kawara from China was history, politics and the China Sea. How did it feel to be sitting doing his thing in China? Also, I may never know if the fact that he didn't paint in any new cities after that was significant or not. Did the Chinese experience stop him in his tracks? Did it dssuade him from continuing to travel the world?
In the year before Kawara began Date Painting, he made a three-panel painting, each panel consisting of white characters on a red background, which read:
RED CHINA / 1965 / VIET-NAM
On being given advice that this was too overtly political, the artist changed the first panel so that the whole thing read:
ONE THING / 1965 / VIET-NAM
Which is almost funny ('HIN' saving him some painting time). But in fact it was the way forward. And from then on it was:
ONE THING / 1966 / DATE PAINTING
Let's pause for a moment. In fact, let's have a nap. Let's just lie down in the middle of On Kawara's hotel room in Peking, where, once upon a time, he painted 21 FEB.2008, while thinking about whether he would be confining himself to New York for the rest of his life. But let us think instead about how old/young we were then, and how old/young the universe was then, and whether we can bring these two time frames together by simply closing our eyes…
TWO
Where am I? Where are we? Hong Kong in September of 2025, of course. Earlier, we spent a long time in room two, looking at the 20 Dates hung along the long, outer wall, and hypothesising about alternative Dates.
Reproduced with the forbearance, I hope, of Tai Kwun.
Next, we have to go up the stairs to section IV, which consists of the seven Dates that make up 'Pure Consciousness'. That's the curatorial idea that Jonathan Watkins (Ikon, Birmingham) came up with in 1997. That is, On Kawara exhibited a set of his Date Paintings (JAN. 1 1997 to JAN. 7, 1997) in a kindergarten and just let the children and the Dates co-exist for a few weeks. In other words, the set of 1997 Dates are not shown at Tai Kwun, but documentation of their movement around the schools of the world is. The latest showing was in a Hong Kong kindergarten earlier this year:
I can't help contrasting the richness of these paintings' lives with the seven Cologne Dates from January 1995 in room II, that I suspect spend most of their time in storage. Maybe that set of seven should be exhibited in German schools. After all, On Kawara's links with Germany were strong thanks to his extraordinary professional relationship and personal friendship with Kasper König.
And so to section III, which is called 'Chronicler of Everyday Existence' and is a reprise of the 'I GOT UP', I WENT and 'I MET' seen in section I, except it focusses exclusively on the artist's 1978 trip to Hong Kong. What a sensible curatorial initiative!
This next photo allows us to see everything that is in this room, except the Date Painting, DEC.23,1978, which is on the wall behind whoever took this photo.
Reproduced with the forbearance, I hope, of Tai Kwun.
A single vitrine, shall we say, divided into four sections.
Top left quadrant: 
Reproduced with the forbearance, I hope, of Tai Kwun.
The 'I WENT' maps for the five days that On and Hiroko were in Hong Kong. In addition, On Kawara drew four preliminary maps on plain paper (as opposed to adding his red line to a pre-printed map, which is the final format for every 'I WENT' map).
The four sketches are shown blown-up on the wall, with the final 'I WENT' for December 24 in the middle. The set up has allowed some great close-up shots to be taken. Like this one of the artist's walking route (red line) from the hotel (red dot) on December 24: 
I've had look at the street where On seems to have been in and out of a lot of establishments, using Google Maps. And its an incredibly colourful and lively scene, just as is shown by the postcard that the artist used for his 'I GOT UP' on December 24, 1978:
I've been round the four-part vitrine a few times already. But I must slow down to describe the scenario fully…
Top right quadrant:
A little book in which On Kawara recorded names of people he met. Plus two bits of paper on which he'd jotted down names so that he didn't forget them. I suppose he needed to do that on occasions when he didn't have the little book with him. You can see these bits and pieces at the very top of the next image.
But it's December 24 I'm going to focus on. So let me just say that 'I MET' for that day reads:
HIROKO HIRAOKA
KWAN CHANYU
DAIWEI KONG
'Kwan Chanyu' being a name that the artist recorded (as 'Chanyu Kwan') on a scrap of newspaper on December 23.
Bottom right quadrant:
Reproduced with the forbearance, I hope, of Tai Kwun.
The two pages to the left are from 'I READ'. While of the two Date Painting boxes, one is empty of its painting (DEC.23, 1978 is hanging on the wall) and the other contains a copy of DEC.24,1978. One knows it's a copy, because the white characters are not on a deep-edge canvas as On Kawara Date Paintings always are.
Below is one of the two Hong Kong Dates as it can be seen at Tai Kwun, hanging on the wall:
Reproduced thanks to the understanding of the One Million Years Foundation
And below is the bottom left quadrant of the four-part vitrine. 
The most interesting quadrant of all!
I don't mean because of the yellowish 'I AM STILL ALIVE' telegram that On Kawara sent to a gallerist in Florence, Italy, on December 26. Fascinating though it is to try and work out where on his 'I WENT' map for that day the artist sent the telegram from.
And I don't mean the four 'I GOT UP' postcards sent to eight-year-old Lili König from the Mandarin Hotel. Though they are charming and aesthetically perfect. Let's show both sides of the December 24 card:
Lili was Kasper König's second child. The first child, Hiroko, soon shortened to Coco, had been given a Date Painting on May 5, 1972 to celebrate her birth. And these cards to Lili were sent in the same year that On and Hiroko (who Coco had been named after, of course) were still congratulating themselves over the birth of their first child, Akito. The very baby that they had brought to Japan in December of 1978 and left for a few days with On's parents and with Hiroko's parents. So that the miracle of birth could be shared amongst their immediate family. I should add that all this 'private' information is disclosed by close inspection of the Date Painting Journal, 'I MET' and 'I WENT'.
You might be asking 'What could be more interesting than the postcards to little Lili?' Well, try this next exhibit. The two photos are of On Kawara in the act of Date Painting on his 46th birthday, December 24, 1978. (Certainly the first one was taken then.) They will have been taken by Hiroko, and deliberately - it seems to me - echo the photo she took of her partner painting JAN.1,1975 in a Holiday Inn in Houston, Texas. 
Reproduced with the forbearance, I hope, of the person who created this page.
Below is a close up of the top photo. On Kawara seems to be using an ashtray as a palette. Which means this was a two-ashtray Date as On would certainly have needed another one for his near-continuous, 20th Century smoking. 
Reproduced with the forbearance, I hope, of RTHK.
I wonder why the narrator in the video recording says 'we can only find one blurry pixelated image of On Kawara online', when the clear, Houston image of New Year's Day in 1975, is on the home page of this website of mine, and 50 people click on that page every day.
Whenever I try and Date Paint, I use a side plate as a palette. There is only ever one colour on it (or, at the most, two), so it doesn't need to be anything more specialised than a small, glazed plate. Clearly, in a hotel in the seventies there would be more ashtrays than side plates hanging around the hotel room, and so Kawara is using an ashtray.
This is a slightly clearer photo of the second image. You see more of the room as a whole: 
Reproduced with the forbearance, I hope, of RTHK.
Note the artist's discarded shoes. It is night. I am going to assume that this photo was taken at the same time as the other. I dare say that the 'I WENT' map for the day is lying on the bed. I dare say the completed postcard for the day, to Lili König, is one of those patches of white lying on the table around which no-one is sitting. It looks to me like there is another ashtray on the empty table. Which means there will be three ashtrays in the room, because the ashtray On Kawara utilised for his smoking needed to be right by his side.
All right, I have a question. I'm sure many readers who are familiar with the essays on this site will have the same question. The only people who can answer it are those responsible for the Hong Kong exhibition. So I ask the gallery why a reproduction of DEC.24, 1978 has been used and not the original painting which we see On Kawara in the very act of painting. I get an answer the same day:
Dear Duncan,
Thank you for your email. I am Ying, co-curator of this exhibition.
The collector informed us that this Date painting was acquired as part of a set that Kawara specifically requested be exhibited as a complete series, not individually. Out of respect for the artist's wishes, we decided to display only photographs of the work. We believe this approach honours Kawara's legacy while still allowing us to communicate his artistic vision to our audience and demonstrate how we handle artists' intentions with care.
Best regards,
Ying
I think about this for a while. And then I write again to Ying Kwok.
Dear Ying,
Thanks very much for this information.
Do you know the dates of the other Date Paintings that were part of the set? And in what country the collector resides? I am trying to understand what motivated On Kawara to make such a request of the collector. It feels to me quite an atypical thing of him to stipulate/request.
I was also fascinated to see the photos of On Kawara in the Mandarin Hotel, Hong Kong. He was, of course, photographed by Hiroko in the same sort of way (back view) in a Holiday Inn in Houston while painting JAN.1,1975. It makes me wonder if One Million Years have more examples of such evocative but ‘anonymous' and discreet photos of the artist!
I do think that the exhibition handles the artists' intentions with great care and I suspect many of your visitors will have been greatly stimulated by the show. How could they not have been!
Best wishes,
Duncan
One of the short videos that the gallery has on its website ends with Kwok saying this: 'We are trying to encourage the audience not to be a passive viewer, but try to really discover, to explore, to make different dots of connection by themself. Then this process is very rewarding. It's a completely different experience, compared to spoon-fed information or story. So this is a new experience. We were hoping that an audience will become more active and become pro-active…'
I think this is exemplary. It prompts me to write again to the co-curator, just a few days after my second email:
Dear Ying,
I hope you don’t mind that I’m writing again about DEC.24,1978.
Obviously, because the painting was made on the artist’s birthday, there could be significant biographical implications. For instance, the artist was staying with relatives/friends in Japan immediately before the trip to Hong Kong and returned there shortly after. It’s perfectly possible that the painting was given to a close friend or member of the family. It is conceivable that this person collected a number of Dates that were significant to On Kawara in some way. But then why would the artist specify that they only be shown together? That would draw attention to himself, and On Kawara, as we know, was a very private individual.
I see that the painting was included in the large show 'Date Painting in 89 Cities' which toured from 1991 to 1993. This suggests that the collector who owns it now, acquired the painting after that, as it was not shown as part of a set. This would make it less likely to be a family member. But I can’t think of the circumstances that would make the artist suggest to the collector that the Dates he owned, including DEC.24,1978, only be shown as a set.
I have made enquiries of a collector who has five Dates that were painted over five days in a row. In this case the artist did not specify that the dates be shown as a set and they have been shown both as a set and as individual paintings. That collector expressed surprise that On Kawara made such a stipulation.
I expect the artist does not want the seven Dates that comprise 'Pure Consciousness' to be shown as individual paintings. But that is a unique case and it puzzles me what he was thinking of when he deemed that DEC.24 be part of a set (and part of a set that didn’t include DEC.23,1978).
I am aware that On Kawara attempted to closely control the distribution of information about himself. And One Million Years Foundation are respectful of that, and by extension so are curators of his shows. However, the artist was also an obsessive recorder of facts about himself (Date Paintings, getting up times, maps and meetings) and this enquiry is about a Date Painting, the existence of which he put in the public realm.
I trust you can find some way of responding to this enquiry without crossing any red lines.
Best wishes,
Duncan
Perhaps I am getting over-serious again. So let's take a deep breath and let that breath out slowly…
"They seek On here.
They seek On there.
They seek the date paintin' New Yorker everywhere."
Meanwhile, Anders Delbom, my artist-friend based in Sweden, one of two artist-pals (the other is Michael Wynne, based in Texas) who make work every day inspired by the example of On Kawara, has written asking me if the 'set' that DEC.24, 1978 was part of could be a set of On Kawara's birthdays over the years.
Good thinking, Anders, and I have already investigated that possibility. Kawara painted December 24 eight times from 1966 to 1978, more than any other December date. But after that he eased off, and didn’t paint a Date on his birthday again for ten years.
I haven’t seen repros of any DEC.24 (not in Candida Höfer's book, nor in the Frankfurt collection, nor in Dia Art Foundation's collection) except the one in question, DEC.24, 1978 which, as I mentioned to Ying Kwok, is in Date Painting in 89 Cities. In the event of DEC. 24, 1978 being part of a set, presumably the editors of that book could have used DEC.23, 1978, as the curators of 'Rules of Freedom, Freedom of Rules' did, to get round the 'only show as a set' stipulation.
Kawara painted DEC.24 five times between 1989 and 1996. The only birthday Date after that was DEC. 24, 2006. This was sold at Christie’s, so I have seen a repro of that. But if the birthdays were being collected by a family member, even by On Kawara himself, why would it have got into a sales room?
The only other 'collection' I can think of would involve the Date that On Kawara made next. He travelled from Hong Kong to Seoul and painted 27 DEC. 1978 during one of the few days he was there, on holiday with Hiroko. After that, he and Hiroko returned to their families in Japan. 
I can imagine that it was difficult for both On's parents and Hiroko's to give the eight-and-a-half-month old baby back to its parents. Maybe either On's mother or Hiroko's mother found it particularly tough to let the child go. And so On Kawara gave her the two Dates and declared that they were a set and shouldn't be shown separately.
Mother: "What is the set called?"
Son.: "Pacific Rim."
Mother: "Nonsense, my brilliant child. I will call the pair, AKITO, and I will give one of the two to Fumiko."
Come to think of it, these two paintings are reproduced on consecutive pages of Date Paintings in 89 Cities. So one could say they appear as a set, the Hong Kong Date rendered in English format, and the Seoul in Esperanto. I am over the moon about the ever-so-slight possibility of this analysis being true.
…..
Reproduced thanks to the understanding of the One Million Years Foundation
When I say 'over the moon' what do I mean, exactly?
Million Years Past /TODAY/ Million Years Future
Ever drifting down the stream -
Lingering in the golden gleam -
Life, what is it but a dream?
