Photos Courtesy of the National Art Center, Tokyo

With its striking facade of waves of glass, The national Art Center, Tokyo, need not beg to differ. A bold move to Roppongi away from the cluster of national and metropolitan-run institutions in Ueno, the new museum encompasses an astounding 48,000m2, making it the largest in Japan.

With no collection of its own, the National Art Center, Tokyo’s 12 exhibition rooms will be divided between shows organized by nationally recognized art associations (ten rooms) and those used for curated exhibitions (two rooms). Alongside the state-of-the-art exhibition spaces are a restaurant and three cafés, a shop, an auditorium, three lecture rooms and a public art library containing 50,000 publications, largely art exhibition catalogues. Also, as part of their “outreach to the public,” the museum will offer educational programs, lectures, gallery talks, internships and volunteer programs. For 2007, the 43 volunteers and ten graduate-students and museum-professional interns have already been selected.

The building is a work of art in itself. The eye-catching design by Kisho Kurokawa is best appreciated from the Roppongi Hills observatory. With a “mori no naka” (in the middle of the woods) theme, the architect based the curved frontage on computer-rendered rhythmic images formed by mountains and the seashore.

Inside, the atrium blends two huge conical pods with natural wood flooring, andon-style lights that illuminate a bank of slatted walls, and leafy views of Aoyama Cemetery. It’s a breathtaking welcome that befits the museum’s original concept as a hirakareta bijutsukan—a museum opened to all.

And yet, amid all its contemporary splendor, is it no more than a white elephant in disguise? Does Japan need another art museum supported by the taxpayers? Will it be possible to fill 14,000m2 of display space all year round? In Tokyo alone, if you add up the four national museums and the nine city-run art and cultural facilities, plus the hundreds of privately owned museums and galleries, you’ve got the potential for a serious glut of walls.

But the figures tell a different story. With more than 30 million residents, this is the most populous metropolis in the world—and its pockets are deep. In 2005, the three most-attended museum exhibitions in the world were all in Tokyo, according to Art Newspaper’s annual survey, with the Hokusai exhibition at Tokyo National Museum attracting more than 9,400 visitors a day, the largest number on record.

Since the national museums were semi-privatized in 2001 to make them responsible for generating a profit, there has been an effort to offer crowd-pleasing shows. If The National Art Center, Tokyo offers any big-name shows like the recent Dali retrospective at the Ueno Royal Museum (4,700 visitors per day) or an Impressionist period show, fees from the entry ticket sales (¥1,100 per adult), as well as catalogue and museum shop sales, could be considerable. The museum’s target is 1.5 million visitors in 2007.

And don’t forget the more than 240 art associations in Tokyo alone vying for rental space to exhibit their members’ works. In fact, The National Art Center, Tokyo is already booked-up for the next five years. From April 2007 through March 2008, 69 art associations will exhibit there, among them—in a coup for the new museum—the coveted Nitten Exhibition, the largest in Japan, until now held at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum in Ueno. Organized by the Nitten Japan Fine Arts Group, the exhibition will contain over 12,000 works of its members covering a space of 10,000m2. If handled right, this may be more like a cash cow than a white elephant.

The museum is also another development in the corporate effort to reinvent Roppongi as something more than a nightlife district. It’s within walking distance of both the Mori Art Museum at Roppongi Hills and the newly rebuilt Suntory Art Museum at Tokyo Midtown, which will open on March 30, and the three have formed an alliance called Art Triangle Roppongi, through which they hope to coordinate future events. It’s a smart collaborative move promoting the area as
a “cultural hub.”

The new museum’s inaugural exhibition, “Living in the Material World: ‘Things’ in Art of the 20th Century and Beyond,” will run January 21 to March 19 and is a practical compilation of more than 500 works from about 280 artists, borrowed from several museum collections in Japan and abroad, including The Museum of Modern Art in New York. The show explores our material world, a timely commentary on the way art has reflected our insatiable desire for “things” and the rise of “global hyper-capitalism.” It includes well-known works like Marcel Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel (orig. 1913) and Tom Wesselmann’s Bathtub Collage #2 (1963).

In tandem will be the tenth anniversary exhibition of the Bunkacho (Agency for Cultural Affairs) Media Arts Festival, titled “The Power of Expression, Japan” with works of manga, anime and entertainment art (Jan 21-Feb 4). This will be followed by an exhibition of works borrowed from the Centre Pompidou in Paris, titled “Paris du Monde entier: Artistes étrangers à Paris 1900-2005” (Feb 7-May 7).

Brand new and cool, but old, wise and resourceful, The National Art Center, Tokyo looks like a big wave about to make quite a splash.

The National Art Center, Tokyo, 7-22-2 Roppongi, Minato-ku. Tel: 03-5777-8600. Open 10am-6pm (until 8pm on Fridays), closed Tuesday. Last entry is 30min before closing. Nearest stn: Nogizaka or Roppongi. See exhibition listings for details. www.nact.jp

Got something to say about this article? Send a letter to the editor at letters@metropolis.co.jp.

Listen to the Metropolis Podcast, the coolest guide to what goes on this week in Tokyo.

Looking for international friends? Check Japan, Inc. Friends now - it's 100% free!