Toyota Municipal Museum of Art
I went to the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art in Toyota, Japan to see the “Gustav Klimt Vienna-Japan 1900″ and the Aichi Triennale (international, multi-venue art fair) exhibition (I posted about the Triennale previously if you’re interested).
The Toyota Municipal Museum of Art is one of the most beautiful and interesting art museums I’ve seen. It was designed by renowned museum designer Taniguchi Yoshio. Additionally, the grounds were designed by landscape artist Peter Walker. It’s on a huge property and is bordered by a traditional Japanese teahouse and garden (see above photos) as well as a castle ruin. A whole day can be spent not only looking at the exhibits but enjoying the architecture, grounds, and surrounding properties.
In case you were wondering, Toyota is in fact home to Toyota car company and 80% of the town works at Toyota :-)
The Aichi Triennale’s exhibits were outstanding. Every single exhibit had an important theme or social comment. The photos above show just a couple. The floral designs by Studio Drift touched on the theme of digital technology in art (do we react the same way to it?), and the work about the Okinawa protests draws attention to a very big issue here: 75% of the U.S. bases in Japan are in Okinawa, even though it is the smallest part of the country. There have been many instances of crime, often violent, as well as accidents (often caused by negligence), not to mention environmental degradation due to the construction/relocation of bases. Specifically, destroying the natural habitat of sea animals including the dugong, or manatee, by filling in the port areas where these animals live has been a particular point of contention.
There were a couple other works that I didn’t take photos of, but I wanted to mention: Taryn Simon’s photos were mind-blowing. I can’t believe some of these photos/videos were allowed to be taken. For instance, she had photos of everything confiscated by the U.S. border patrol in a 24 hour period at one airport; another video showed a test bombing by the US military; another showed glowing blue circles which are actually barrels of radioactive material at a restricted site. Thought-provoking, to say the least.
Another notable series of works were by Reynier Leyva Novo, who took photos of re-created floral tabletop arrangements. What makes this interesting is that these arrangements were at the signing tables of famous trade/political deals. Just the floral arrangements, with a description of the deal beside it. The deals described were often contentious or unethical, and a lot of them were very high-profile. We are talking major deals between countries that were often very shady. It was so interesting to not only read about these deals, but the presentation... just featuring the flowers, looking so inconspicuous in themselves.
Just google Taryn Simon and Trynier Leyva Novo to see examples of their work. In particular, I think these two artists are among the best of the Triennale.
