Art, Hiking and Travel in Japan - Welcome Happiness - Mori Art Museum

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

Welcome Happiness (feature)

The new Mori Art Museum hopes to lead Roppongi's cultural evolution. John McGee sees what's up.

Luo Brothers, from "Welcome to the World's Most Famous Brands," 1997
(Image courtesy the artists and Mori Art Museum)

At the center of the Roppongi Hills development is a 54-story office tower shaped like an Asahi Super Dry tallboy. It's an apropos landmark to High-Touch Town's most famous diversions: business and pleasure. But on the 52nd and 53rd floors of the Kohn Pedersen Fox-designed pop-art beer can, just behind the giant MORI logo, is a new side of Roppongi culture—a contemporary art museum.

The Mori Art Museum (MAM) is developer Minoru Mori's first foray into art. He's making it a bold one, placing his seat of "high" culture at the top of his ¥270 billion, 17-years-in-the-making high-rent hill-town. To give it the diamond-and-caviar spotlight a new bijutsukan (art museum) deserves, MAM debuts this Saturday, October 18, months after the April opening of the rest of Roppongi Hills' apartments, restaurants, offices and boutiques.

The Mori Art Museum casts its glow
(Tatsuo Miyajima's Counter Void and
TV Asahi building in foreground)
(Photo: John McGee)

But does Tokyo need another museum? Myriad private and public contemporary art institutions already crowd every corner of the capital. There's the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (Kiba), Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery (Nishi-Shinjuku), the Hara Museum (Shinagawa), Watari-um (Jingumae), and the Tokyo National Museum of Modern Art (Takebashi). Plus there are those further afield (in Urawa, Mitaka, Yokohama and Mito), those that hold irregular shows of contemporary art (e.g. Bunkamura) and small venues (e.g. Parco). With such a seeming glut, why should we be excited about MAM?

Are you ready for happiness?

"It's the quality of what we show and the way we show it—world-class, nothing less," says MAM director David Elliott. The first non-Japanese museum director in the country is the 54-year-old former director of the Moderna Museet in Stockholm and the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford. Elliott has made a name for himself by looking beyond the usual suspects, especially to art from non-western countries. Since taking the MAM helm in November 2001, Elliott has developed an ambitious mission for the museum, one that remains open to art from all over while focusing on the modern and contemporary art of Japan and Asia.

The nearly 32,000ft2 (2875m2), Gluckman Mayner Architects-designed galleries also have an Asian bent, combining Buddhist circumambulation with the hide-and-reveal strategy of a Japanese garden. At the center is a red sandstone-shingled elliptical core. Circling this are the galleries—an accordioned donut of big hallways interspersed by glass, black and white cubes on the 53rd floor and three somewhat smaller halls on the 52nd floor. The curved outer walls of the building form a final, transparent shell.

Over the museum's first two years, seven wide-ranging exhibitions will fill the spaces. Some will be organized in-house, e.g. the biennale-esque "Roppongi Crossing," a recurring exhibition of the best contemporary art (plus some design) being made in Japan. The first installment opens in February 2004 with about 65 artists. Another is "Hot 'n' Spicy," a showcase of contemporary art, music and design from throughout Asia opening in December 2004. Other shows will be imported from institutions overseas or collaboratively organized, such as "Modern Means…," a critical re-examination of more than 300 works from the Museum of Modern Art, New York, that opens in May 2004.

But first, get ready to experience "Happiness: A Survival Guide for Art and Life." The optimistically titled inaugural show includes nearly 250 works by 180 artists (representing 32 countries) and spans centuries, from the sixth to the 21st. Most work comes from public and private collections around the world, but a number of new pieces have been commissioned for the show.

David Elliot, Mori Art Museum Director (left) and Pier Luigi Tazzi, Mori Art
Museum Guest Curator (Photo courtesy Mori Art Museum)

Don't worry about being tested on your art history. "The exhibition is structured like a journey," says Elliott. "It's montage rather than a survey." He and co-curator, Pier Luigi Tazzi, a 62-year-old veteran of shows like Documenta and the Venice Biennale brought on exclusively for "Happiness," arranged the exhibition into four ideas—Arcadia, Nirvana, Desire and Harmony—that reflect the variety of cultural takes of the artists and their works.

It's more than representation. "We're not only illustrating something…but also providing the possibility to experience happiness," says Tazzi. To these entwined ends, an ancient stone bodhisattva will appear with Yoshitomo Nara's recent photo of street kids in post-war Afghanistan; the landscapes of Monet and Constable will meet the watery acrylic stains of Naofumi Maruyama; the corporeality of shunga erotic prints will play off the seething abstract color photography of Thomas Ruff. "Most of the artists are, in a way, very well known," says Tazzi, "but we are trying to make new links between them to give an idea of what we consider art in our time."

Art for all

Elliott also hopes that connecting older, more familiar artists with those working today will help open contemporary art to a new audience. "We wanted to make it clear that contemporary art is busy with things that people have been busy with for a long, long time," he says.

Japan, Descent of the Amida Trinity,
14th century (Kamakura Period), ink,
colors and gold on silk, private
collection (Image courtesy Mori Art
Museum)

Making art accessible is one of Elliott's goals for MAM. He's planning extensive education, outreach and other public programs, e.g. seminars at the museum, workshops at city schools and elsewhere in the community, and symposia like recent ones they held on public art and the future of museums.

Accessibility is sometimes a simple, physical thing. To appeal to overtime office workers, Roppongi-bound revelers and other night owls, MAM will stay open late—until midnight Friday and Saturday, and until 10pm Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. And one ticket will admit visitors to both the museum and the vaulted, light-filled observation deck, Tokyo City View, that's wedged between the angles of the galleries and the curving outer wall of the building (on a clear day, it gives an incomparable overlook of the entire city, from Tokyo Bay to Chiba, Mount Fuji to Gunma). "At a stroke it broadens the public," says Elliott, "It's a potentially very, very interesting crossover."

At the same time, Elliott says that MAM's shows won't be "dumbed down." "I don't think a museum of contemporary art should be demand-led. I think it actually has to reflect what artists are doing."

MAM has already been actively researching, and presenting, the Tokyo art scene. At Think Zone, their pre-opening space, MAM sponsored the Young Video Artists Initiative, an open competition and series of screenings that ran throughout 2002, and the Open Mind contemporary music event and CD release in December 2002.

One way the museum will continue this dedication to emerging artists is through MAM Projects, an exhibition series and catalog imprint that will introduce artists from Japan, Latin America, Africa and elsewhere who have not yet had solo shows in public spaces. There are also plans to set up short-term residencies for international artists and curators as part of an effort to disseminate information about the latest developments in Asian art.

A museum's made of people

Helping Elliott run these multitudinous programs are 34 bilingual employees, including a handpicked curatorial dream team. Deputy-director Fumio Nanjo, who heads curatorial, PR and education efforts, had been one of Japan's highest-profile freelance contemporary art curators, working on the Venice Biennale, Yokohama Triennale and other shows. And the three full-time curators and one associate—
Mami Kataoka, former chief curator at Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery; Sunhee Kim, former chief curator at the Gwangju City Art Museum, South Korea; Natsumi Araki, former curator at the Mitaka City Arts Center; and Yukiko Shikata, former curator at Canon Art Lab—represent a wide-ranging view of contemporary art, design and new media inside Japan, across Asia and beyond.

Guler, Punjab Hills, India, Girls Bathing,
c.1760-1765, opaque watercolor on paper,
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
(Image courtesy Mori Art Museum)

The Museum Board is a cadre of creative bigwigs like artist Hiroshi Sugimoto and architect Tadao Ando chaired by Yoshiko Mori, wife of the developer, that evaluates and approves MAM's programming. Additionally, an international advisory committee made up of directors from the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Tate Gallery and other museums will work with MAM to help it become an institution with global reach and significance.

Everyone's a critic

But final approval at MAM comes from Mori, the man who puts his money where Elliott's mouth is. The Donald Trump of Tokyo hasn't scrimped, spending ¥1 billion to get MAM operational (excluding construction), according to Elliott. Such outpouring seems an almost flamboyant effort to get it right. As Elliott says, "We're going to go in at the top end."

While set-up costs and the size of "Happiness" have made MAM's past year particularly expensive, museums are perennial money losers. Adding to this businessman's bane is a continuing slow economy. Will Mori's commitment last?

Some skeptics ask if it really matters, calling MAM an ornament in an over-designed retail-entertainment complex ("a museum in a mall") or an ivory tower with truly rarefied air—Tokyo's highest museum and highest admission price, ¥1,500 (in no doubt unintended irony, a PR photo shows MAM's graphic designer, Jonathon Barnbrook, standing in front of a building emblazoned with a huge image of Che Guevara).

Thomas Ruff, Substrat 6 III/Substrate 6 III, 2002, inkjet print, courtesy of Gallery Koyanagi

Thomas Ruff, Substrat 6 III/Substrate
6 III, 2002, inkjet print (Image
courtesy Gallery Koyanagi)

Museums in office buildings are fairly common in Tokyo: Opera City, Suntory, and Tokyo's other high-flyer with a view, the Sompo Museum (on the 42nd floor of an insurance company tower in Nishi-Shinjuku) are examples. But for an internationally-oriented institution, it could be a PR problem—"Where's the museum? There, above Goldman Sachs"—an image of art being literally supported by business.

Contributing to this is the difficulty of separating MAM from Mori Building Co., the country's largest commercial developer. There's the financial connection, of course, with Mori Building covering for the difference between MAM's income and expenses. But it's deeper. Mori Building organized the first show in the museum's spaces ("The Global City," which ran April-September 2003). Both MAM and Mori Building (plus Asahi TV) chose the public artwork around the base of the building. Some, like Cai Guo-Qiang's stone fountain, are attractive and well sited. Others are not. Which represent the museum's future?

Elliott acknowledges criticism is inevitable. "It goes with the territory." He adds, "I hope that it's criticism which is stimulating and creative rather than trying to be destructive."

What the future holds

Ultimately it's what MAM produces through its exhibitions and programs that's most important. Judging by its accomplishments and immediate plans, the museum looks to stimulate progressive programming and community involvement in the often sleepy art scene of the world's most populous city. Elliott hopes to be a catalyst in what he calls a "building interest in contemporary art and design" in Tokyo. He's optimistic about MAM becoming a center, both culturally and geographically, for this change.

Indeed, Roppongi's recent arrival as the central stop on the Hibiya line's museum-gallery corridor is due in no small part to MAM's high-profile. New venues like Complex, the whitewashed home of five contemporary art galleries that opened last April in a Mori-owned building a couple of blocks east of MAM, and NiCAF's just-opened Glasshouse in Nishi Azabu moved here partly because of the perceived draw of the new museum (the huge new National Art Gallery, currently rising from a lot next to Aoyama Cemetery and due to open in late 2006, also helps).

So will MAM be a source of happiness more long-term than a Roppongi one-night stand? Elliott, for one, is thinking long-term, talking of perhaps starting a collection after the museum's critical first two years, and of plans to open a branch of MAM in Mori Building's Shanghai World Financial Center—which will be the world's tallest building—sometime in 2007-8. By then, Elliott says, "the aim is that the [museum's] activities are at a very, very high level…so that Tokyo is taking its place with the other big world capitals and having a very strong center for exhibitions of contemporary art. It's not just bringing it up to the standard of others but it's actually adding to the sum of knowledge…so that people will say, 'Oh yeah, Tokyo, they did something really new.'"

The exhibition "Happiness: a Survival Guide for Art and Life" was held Oct 2003-Jan 2004 at the Mori Art Museum in Roppongi, Tokyo, Japan.

[Update: The MAM today is an important Tokyo institution. It lost one of its exhibition floors, but still has huge galleries and Tokyo's best views. Director David Elliott has decided to move on in 2006.]