Art in Japan>Museums, Galleries & Organizations>National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (MOMAT)

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

National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (MOMAT)

by John McGee

Some people express disappointment when they first visit the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (MOMAT). With a name that evokes the MoMA in New York and beyond, visitors often expect a collection of 20th-century American and European art. But Takebashi is not Manhattan. "We want to show a brief history of Japanese modernism from the Meiji Era to the present," curator Mika Kuraya says. The permanent collection of nearly 9,000 works of art—95 percent by Japanese artists—represents a unique perspective on 20th-century art. "It's modernism on the periphery," explains Kuraya. 

MOMAT's terrace, Queen Alice H20 
restaurant, and Gate, an Isamu Noguchi
sculpture made for the museum in 1969
(Images courtesy MOMAT)

MOMAT recently reopened following a two-and-a-half year, ¥7.8 billion renovation. The original building—constructed and donated in 1969 by Shojiro Ishibashi, the founder of Bridgestone Tire—was aging and cramped. While the exterior of the modernist box designed by Yoshiro Taniguchi (father of Yoshio Taniguchi, the architect of New York MoMA's new building) was little changed, the interior was completely redone, increasing gallery space and adding new features. Some changes, like a polished stone entryway, were cosmetic. Others reflect the shifting expectations of museum-goers—an art library, lecture hall, glass-box museum shop and restaurant. 

Kuraya jokes that while many of the museum's 1,300 visitors a day come to see the museum facelift or current exhibition, some seem more enticed by the new French eatery, Queen Alice H2O. Part of a popular chain, its open-air terrace and glass-wall interior look out on the broad moat, massive stone walls and thick trees of the Imperial Palace.

Yayoi Kusama, Room of Morals, 1976,
mixed media, 270x185x25cm  

For the museum's first post-renovation exhibition, Kuraya and 11 other curators organized "The Unfinished Century: Legacies of 20th-Century Art." This expansive show of nearly 400 artworks from 1897-2000 looks at the development of Japanese modern art in relation to the myriad international art movements and social changes of the last century. 

Such a broad approach is like an introductory art history slide show—the diversity of ideas is overwhelming, jarring and too condensed. The show succeeds, however, in identifying key Japanese modernists like Ryusei Kishida and Gyokudo Kawai, who may not be familiar to non-Japanese viewers. 

Another success is the section tracing Japanese art throughout the war years. The radical experiments of the teens through 1930s, like Tetsugoro Yorozu's expressionist Self-Portrait with Red Eyes (1912), gave way to nationalist paintings like Tsuguharu Fujita's chilling Compatriots on Saipan Island Remain Faithful to the End (1945), in which villagers jump from cliffs or disembowel themselves. The horrific end of the war is depicted in the dissolving bodies of Iri and Toshi Maruki's The Hiroshima Panels (I) Ghosts (1950) and photos of Nagasaki's atomic aftermath. 

Ryusei Kishida, Road Cut Through a Hill, 
1915, oil on canvas, 56x53cm 

About half of the work in "Legacies" comes from MOMAT's permanent collection. Due to budget restrictions, they had to flesh out European and American movements from Japanese collections. The resources can feel strained, but can also shine—e.g. an early Frank Stella gray painting, and a colorful Donald Judd wall piece. And there are a few surprises from contemporary Japanese artists, like an On Kawara painting—depicting a man falling down a hole—on a shaped canvas. 

Though too broad, "Legacies" does help introduce viewers to the museum's collections and intentions. And with an upcoming Kandinsky retrospective at the end of March and a group show of contemporary Japanese artists in the fall, the museum will surely be a popular place for appreciating art or admiring cherry blossoms from its new terrace. That's something you won't find in Manhattan. 

This exhibition was held Jan-Mar 2002 at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (MOMAT) in Takebashi, Tokyo, Japan.

©2006 John McGee

©2006-2008 John McGee. All Rights Reserved. No part of this site may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission.