A few weeks ago I got the best news: A museum was reopening in Tokyo. (OK, yes, I probably have gotten better news than that in my life, but this was still pretty good.)
The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT) had been closed for three years in order to renovate the building. And since I only moved to Tokyo just under two years ago, I had not yet gone! I promise, for me this was quite exhilarating.
So this past Saturday I took myself all the way out to Kiba Park, where the museum is, on the other side of the city from my apartment. And after a full two hours in its current exhibit, "Weavers of Worlds: A Century of Flux in Japanese Modern/Contemporary Art," I just wandered around taking pictures of some of its better architectural features.
Some architecture details:
The museum was designed by Takahiko Yangisawa, who also worked on several other notable buildings, such as the MOA Museum in Atami, Shizuoka Prefecture (1981); New National Theatre, Tokyo (1997); and Tokyo Opera City (1999).
It's a large (approx. 24,000-square-feet), multipurpose building and (compared to many museums in Japan) fairly functional as a public space. It's original collection came from the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum in Ueno Park, which passed over its permanent collection to the MOT in order to focus on temporary, traveling exhibitions.
The MOT's main entrance is this massive steel walkway, which runs along the entire park-facing length of the building. It has these interesting triangular cut-outs and circular holes.
The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT) had been closed for three years in order to renovate the building. And since I only moved to Tokyo just under two years ago, I had not yet gone! I promise, for me this was quite exhilarating.
So this past Saturday I took myself all the way out to Kiba Park, where the museum is, on the other side of the city from my apartment. And after a full two hours in its current exhibit, "Weavers of Worlds: A Century of Flux in Japanese Modern/Contemporary Art," I just wandered around taking pictures of some of its better architectural features.
Some architecture details:
The museum was designed by Takahiko Yangisawa, who also worked on several other notable buildings, such as the MOA Museum in Atami, Shizuoka Prefecture (1981); New National Theatre, Tokyo (1997); and Tokyo Opera City (1999).
It's a large (approx. 24,000-square-feet), multipurpose building and (compared to many museums in Japan) fairly functional as a public space. It's original collection came from the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum in Ueno Park, which passed over its permanent collection to the MOT in order to focus on temporary, traveling exhibitions.
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It also has a sunken "stone garden" running underneath the main walkway which, although a little dim, provides some interesting shadows and reflections of buildings in the area. You can access it from a switchback ramp outside the museum (in fact, you can see the top of this ramp in the above photo) as well as a staircase from the museum's interior courtyard.
...or peeking out around apartment building walls...
I also quite enjoyed its interior courtyard, which is connected to the museum shop and cafe. I'm a sucker for the contrast between the dots on the walls and the curving lines of the staircase and squiggly orange benches (I also like how the dot motif is present throughout the entire museum).
This weekend it was also (in Tokyo at least) peak sakura season. All of the popular cherry blossom-viewing areas were at maximum capacity, to the point where it's really just people watching with a glimpse of flowers out of the corner of your eye. (OK so it's not really as bad as all that, but it does feel quite crowded everywhere there are nice sakura.) That being said, I did find some time this weekend to admire the blooms, whether they were lit up at night...
...or peeking out around apartment building walls...
...or at parks full of people picnicking (and drinking) while enjoying the spring weather.
This latter event, which was part of the 2019 Intercollegiate Hanami in which a bunch of alums from various U.S. and European universities (mostly Ivies, a decent chunk of schools from California, a few representatives from Oxford and Georgetown etcetc.) gathered together to drink and socialize and network had one bonus surprise: Prime Minister Abe Shinzo was coincidentally in the same park.
Casual. Of course everyone swarmed around him, and I heard tell that more than a few people asked him was Japan's era name was going to be. The day after this event the government announced it was Reiwa, and I'm a little disappointed in the reporter in me that I didn't fight my way to the front of the pack to try. Ah, well: maybe next emperor!
That's all for now, though heads up: I AM attending a VERY STRANGE event this weekend that will be of great amusement to many of you, I'm sure. Stay tuned!
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