Kanazawa 21st Century Museum

29 Aug 2005 Category: Events & Exhibitions, Features, Japan

A new type of museum opened in the medium-sized city of Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture on October 9th, 2004. 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa stands in the center of the city. The openness of the museum, the transparent corridors and circular form with a diameter of 112.5 meters make for an extremely welcoming experience. Transcending the aim of existing museums, Kanazawa 21st also serves as community center and offers much more than art to the visitors. Educator Shin Kurowasa talks about how museums should function in the future, and about the “Matthew Barney: Drawing Restraint” exhibition.

Interview by Uleshka and Kyoko
Translated by Kyoko

Could you briefly tell us a little bit about how the museum was founded?

The museum was founded largely because of 2 reasons. The first reason behind the foundation was because of something called “donut phenomenon.” Since Kanazawa University and the perfectural government building had moved away from center of Kanazawa city, the people who hung out in this part of city started to disappear. Concerned about this problem, we had to think how we could make the streets “full of life,” again. Secondly, whereas Kanazawa is known as a historical city full of local culture and traditions, hence we have had a difficulty in creating new trends. So we wanted to develop a new environment where a new style could be born.

We believe that the museums nowadays should have strong connection with the community in order to give the place “life”. Just showing art pieces doesn’t make people come back. The museum should allow visitors to participate, and visitors to become initiators. We as a staff of the museum, need to come up with the strategy to create involvement and one of the tactics is to target children. Educating children to have a better understanding of art is very important in order to produce future audiences, and it is easier for them to get familiar with contemporary art. If children come to the museum, probably their parents will come, too.

How do you attract children specifically?

Well for instance, we created a flier specifically for them and hand them out to every child in the city.

Wow, for every schoolchild?

Yes. And we invited all the children from grade school and junior high school when the museum opened. During the first 4 months, about 100 schools came to visit, which is approximately 40,000 kids and teachers. As a result, a lot of parents started to visit, accompanying their children.

Looking around the museum, we were surprised at the number of children, actually.

Families at the Matthew Barney exhibition. (laugh) Our effort has paid off.

Then how about for adults? Do you do anything special for adult to participate?

Well, for example, we have an Artist-in-Residence program. When sculptor Kenji Yanobe stayed in the Project Room, he called for grown-ups to join him to create art pieces for the children. Then adults started gathering around here. One time, one of them thought of fun event oriented to kids for Valentine’s day, which is creating woolen scarf for the building. In winter time, this museum looks very cold because of transparency.(laugh) Anyway, adults taught knitting to kids and we created a 600 meter scarf.

That means, you don’t need to be a curator to organize museum events?

Today another children’s event is taking place at Kid’s Studio. Using the internet, children make a set of drawings in relay-style with others in a remote place. This event was thought up by school teachers. The museum staff’s role in this is merely to suggest better approaches and to support the event. So everybody can be initiator in our museum.

I see. Reading the museum’s press release, one of the concepts says something like “providing the values that are different from Western modernism.” Could you explain what that means?

Uh, “different from Western modernism” is misleading. Let’s see, what we are trying to do is more like “transcending Modernism.” Simply put, we’ve learned a lot from Europe. But now everywhere in the world seems very interesting. Africa, interesting. South America, interesting and so on. It is like our pronouncement that we don’t need to judge things by Western point of view, which has been dominant. We should have a new artistinc viewpoint. Viewing the world from Kanazawa’s point of view is OK, too.

That’s very interesting. Could you tell us how you chose your permanent collection?

There are two key concepts; “another world” and “communication.” Rectangular or square shapes are metaphors for painting, such as windows and mirrors. Like Turrell’s “Blue Planet Sky,” the other side of the window is “another world,” which is the world of art. You can experience art by simple actions like looking through window. And “communication” applies to works like “Swimming Pool.” For instance, if people above wave their hands, the person below waves back naturally. “Swimming Pool” encourages strangers to communicate.

Lets change the subject to the “Matthew Barney: Drawing Restraint” exhibition. Barney has been working on the “Drawing Restraint” (that is, drawing while restraining his body movement) project since the 80s when he created DR 1 to 8. This time, he created DR 9 to 11. The film “Drawing Restraint 9″ was created especially for this museum, is that right?

Yes, that’s correct. Before the museum opened, we told Matthew Barny that we would like to have his exhibition in Kanazawa. We invited him to Kanazawa and he even saw the building under construction. He became fond of this space a lot and agreed. For this exhibition, he wanted to create something especially for Japan. After doing a lot of research about this country, he got to the theme of whale hunting in the end.

The movie was mystical and very intense. Many people in the cinema had trouble with the scene when Matthew Barney and Björk cut each other apart with whaling tools, before they transform into whales themselves. A women behind us even passed out and had to be taken out of the cinema hall. Even after watching the whole movie, many things stay unclear and mystical - but I was somehow touched by the idea of time and transcending, transforming life back into oil or simply another form of energy.

Barney has several creative processes, and focusing on his own material is one of them. He often uses materials like oil and plastic. Oil and plastic are made out of petroleum. Humans used to use whale oil before discovering petroleum oil. So, here comes the “whale aspect”. Petroleum was once a creature at a time in the past. Therefore, his materials are something transformed from the body of the creature. Our body also can transform into oil someday. All of those ideas came together and he combined them with the whale hunting culture in Japan. He then made a phone call to Yuko Hasegawa, (chief curator) who coordinated the whole project in Japan and told her, “I would like to do some filming on a whaling ship.”

Arranging for whaling ship sounds like a tough job.

Yeah, that was very difficult. We don’t have any in Kanazawa. (laugh) We didn’t know what to do and finally ended up contacting the Fisheries Agency. There is a man who is knowledgeable about whales and whale hunting in the Agency. With his great help, we were allowed to film on a real whaling ship. We only had three days to film all the scenes we needed the ship for, so that was really tough.

Overall, I was very impressed by amount of work this movie must have been. Apart from the art work itself, it can almost be seen as a masterpiece of organization, choreography and culture studies.

Considering, that the museum is so far from a really big city but can still keep it’s high quality, such as managing the Mattew Barney exhibition, is quite impressive. I think it’s a rare case even looking around the world.

But Museum Bilbao in Spain is also located in a non-major city. Of course it is hard to keep up this size and quality in Kanazawa, however, I think that it’s right to have a museum for a city with a population of 500,000.

Do you think this museum would function in the same way in a big city, for instance in Tokyo?

Yes, I think so. Before creating this museum, we studied other existing museums, and thought a lot about “what is needed for a new type of museum”. For instance, problems like “how can we make our building more accessible?” - we solved that with a transparent corridor. If our building is made out of concrete, it won’t be as welcoming as it is now. Visitors feel comfortable seeing the other visitors inside the building, even before they enter the museum.

Talking of visitor involvement, I think many museums are trying to encourage this movement now. The museum is managed with a low budget, therefore naturally we need cooperation from the community, such as volunteers. In order to encourage participation, we built a nursery in this museum. Well, that is just one example. We prepared new features in order to transcend the aim of existing museums. In this manner, this kind of museum would function well everywhere in the world, I believe.

It’s been only less than year since it has opened, but how well you are doing with number of visitors?

To date there have been about 1,450,000 visitor to our museum. Fortunately, we have had a steady stream of visitors since the opening.

That’s amazing. We noticed that you have a wide variety of visitors. We just saw an older couple at the Matthew Barney exhibition. They were saying, “I don’t get it at all, do you?” with an amused smile. (laugh) That was nice to look at.

I think it is ok that they don’t understand fully about art as long as they enjoy “mystery.” You know, it is almost impossible to explain the philosophy behind Matthew Barney’s work to small children. But even if “it does’t make sense” to them, I want them to remember the exhibition in a way such as, “well, I don’t get it, but it was kind of fun!” In that way, the museum can start to become a true place of learning for them.

Thank you very much for the interview!

10 Comments

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   Posted by: William Taylor on October 27th, 2005 at 4:13 pm

2. I live in Kanazawa. This museum is one of the best I’ve ever visitied. As far as contemporary art goes the quality is extremely high. I highly recommend it to anyone who is near Kanazawa.

   Here’s a link to my my 21st Century museum review, if you are interested.

   Posted by: Græme on January 22nd, 2007 at 4:25 pm

3. thanks for subject. it is very intersting post

   Posted by: nakliyat on February 28th, 2008 at 3:14 am

4. I finally got a chance to go to the museum last weekend. I’m so glad I went!

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5. thanks ,I want go museum

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