Art in Japan>Contemporary Art 1930-2004>Art Space: Architecturally Significant Museums and Galleries in Tokyo

Original articles on art, artists, architecture, exhibitions, galleries, museums and cultural institutions around Tokyo, Japan.

Art Space: Architecturally Significant Museums and Galleries in Tokyo

by John McGee

Canada Gardens, Canadian Embassy in Akasaka, designed by Raymond Moriyama 
(Photo courtesy Canadian Embassy)

Despite what your mother may have told you, sometimes what’s outside is as important as what’s inside. In traditional Japanese culture, for example, the beauty of the package accentuates its contents—even 7-11 sells attractively wrapped items. While white plastic Lawson bags and well-worn blue Tiffany paper sacks have all but replaced patterned cotton furoshiki (wrapping cloth) on the streets of Tokyo today, the same is not true for many of Tokyo’s art museum and gallery buildings: The facades of some are as compelling as the work inside. 

For people with limited time, or those who just like a two-for-one deal, start with these: 

Design Festa Gallery's eccentric facade in Harajuku
(Photo: John McGee)

In the Harajuku/Aoyama area, Watari-um Museum of Contemporary Art, designed by Swiss architect Mario Botta (1990) and Spiral by Fumihiko Maki and Associates (1985) are two of the best-known architecturally interesting art buildings. (For more of Fumihiko Maki, visit Hillside Forum in Daikanyama, a complex of buildings designed and erected over a nearly 25-year period.)

Closer to Harajuku station, local muralists and painters regularly funk up the exterior of the aging Japanese apartment building that's home to Design Festa Gallery with their fantastic visions. The whitewashed interior spaces are rented to aspiring young artists. Just north of Harajuku, GA Gallery in Sendagaya holds architecture exhibitions and houses the offices of Global Architecture publishing company. The hard-edged, cement, Brutalist-style building was designed by Makoto Suzuki-AMS Architects in 1983. 

The Canadian Embassy in Akasaka, a massive, cold granite and glass wedge designed by Japanese-Canadian architect Raymond Moriyama (1991), showcases mostly Canadian and some Japanese talent in its large basement space.

Galerie Deux (now closed) in Meguro-ku (Photo: John McGee)

Around Ginza, the progressive Shiseido Gallery is in the basement of the ruddy  Shiseido tower block by Spaniard Ricardo Bofill (2001). The youthful Forum Art Shop gallery is on the ground floor of Uruguayan-born Rafael Vinoly’s Tokyo International Forum (1996), a dramatic terrarium of curved glass and trusses and  free-standing boxes arranged around a leafy courtyard in Yurakucho.

Farther east, deep in the heart of shitamachi (old town), three excellent contemporary art spaces—Rice, Taro Nasu and Tomio Koyama galleries-share Saga-cho’s Shokuryo Building, a rare pre-war, open-courtyard rice warehouse not too far from the Museum of Contemporary Art in Kiba. [This space has since closed.]

To the north, in Ueno, there are at least two must-sees: SCAI the Bathhouse, a former sento (public bath) converted into a contemporary art space and Yoshio Taniguchi’s Gallery of Horyu-ji Treasures, Tokyo National Museum (1999), a modernist glass box filled with early Japanese Buddhist relics. 

Japan Folk Crafts Museum (Nihon 
Mingei-kan) in Shibuya-ku
(Photo: John McGee)

Galerie Deux’s inconvenient location in a swank residential section of Meguro-ku is mitigated by its huge space (designed by Kojiro Kitayama, younger brother of Tadao Ando in 1995), challenging contemporary art programs and long exhibitions. [This space has since closed.]

Finally, the vintage-style Japanese wooden building housing the Japan Folk Crafts Museum (Nihon Mingei-kan) in Komaba-Todaimae, Shibuya-ku is probably one of the only museums requiring you to remove your shoes at the entrance.

©2007 John McGee

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