|
The Mori Art Museum is a privately funded institution and is the brainchild
of property developer Minoru Mori who, with his wife Yoshiko Mori,
was committed to creating a contemporary art museum in Japan. Aware
of the fact that Tokyo lacked a proper institution to present contemporary
Japanese and Asian art to Western countries, Mori appointed a British
director, David Elliott, from the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary
Art in Stockholm. Elliott was originally Director of the Museum of
Modern Art in Oxford. He has also staged many exhibitions on post-war
Asian art and will be well placed to present contemporary Japanese
arts and culture to the rest of the world with a refreshing perspective
that, perhaps, a Japanese director could not have mustered at this
point. For the museum architecture, Mori called upon American architect
Richard Gluckman, well known for the Whitney Museum in New York and
Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. Mori has also gathered high profile
figures from the global museum world including Glenn Lowry from the
Museum of Modern Art in New York, Alfred Pacquement from Georges Pompidou
Centre in Paris, and Nicholas Serota from the Tate in London to form
an international advisory board, thus ensuring that he gets a museum
with a truly international viewpoint.
Elliott says, 'Tokyo seems to be isolated
from the rest of the world and now it is about time to communicate
and get involved with the rest of the world'.
He recognises great energy in Japanese audiences but points out
that the contemporary art community is still very marginal:
'We are very concerned in the relationship
between art and our life. Art is only intelligible in its relationship
to our life. Without that, art has no meaning. So our policy is
to focus on the contemporary, primarily Japan and Asia, the things
around us; not just a visual art but also fashion, design and architecture
which make our museum different from other museums in the world.'
The Mori will not at first be creating a permanent collection.
Having said that, the Mori has already commissioned about 20 public
artworks and street 'furniture' from leading international artists and designers to adorn its premises.
This, together with the museum's extensive
outreach programmes, underscores the museum's
vision of making contemporary art more accessible. And the Mori
is not just confined within the museum; its activities will include
performances in the outdoor arena, with the aim of flowing into
the city at large.
|
