The 21st Century Museum Of Contemporary Art. Kanazawa

The 21st Century Museum Of Contemporary Art. Kanazawa is very popular since its opening. On August 13 this summer, on visiting there I saw several hundred visitors with foreign travelers waiting for the opening time of the museum. Many guidebooks on traveling in Kanazawa recommend travelers to visit there. The 21st Century Museum Of Contemporary Art. Kanazawa is one of the popular sight-seeing spots in Kanazawa beyond the category of a museum.

The birth of the museum

The museum was built in 2004 in the center of Kanazawa, near Kenroku Park. It was founded by the strong thoughts of the then mayor, Mr. Yamade. He thought that he wanted to build not only a new-type of museum different from preexisting museums of appreciating pictures or statues, but also a museum that Kanazawa citizens could enjoy during their daily lives. At first He chose a contemporary art museum. Secondly, he chose a unique design like a UFO vessel. The structure is white and has a large flat circle form, round glass windows on all sides and four entrances. It shows “welcome” in no words. Furthermore, it has free exhibition rooms along with admission-paid exhibition rooms.

Likewise, the exhibitions in the museum are with elements of entertainment. The most popular exhibition is “A swimming pool” by Leandro Erlich that people can see from above and from below. It makes visitors have fun without the information. They spontaneously take commemorative photographs in. The art creator said that it was the best work in the world that people had taken commemorative photographs in.

Contemporary art is difficult to understand because it is beyond existing thoughts, concepts or how to appreciate it. However, exhibitions in the museum are popular among citizens and travelers because these simply stimulate their senses. It often triggers the switch of elements of entertainment or often touches subconscious knowledge of life like fluctuation or explorations of feelings. It affects children who don’t have preexisting thoughts. The more they perceive something through their senses, the more interesting the next unseen exhibitions will be.

On the day I visited there the special exhibition of new type moving visual works which were created by the TeamLab was shown, it was beautiful and had the unique fluctuation of colors and awakened visitors’ sensibility of beauty. In the room of the special exhibition there were free white sheets of paper and many colorful crayons, many children and adults independently drew their own impressions from the exhibition on the paper by crayons which they selected depending on their own terms. It made them have fun.

The 21st Century Museum Of Contemporary Art. Kanazawa might have brought a new horizon to Kanazawa with the eagerness of keeping its traditional culture under the thoughts of the then mayor, Mr. Yamade, that the museum should be for the daily lives of citizens. Eventually, a new value may be born from the fundamental daily pleasures of people.

The struggle under the surface of the popularity 

Such a popular museum wasn’t popular among traditional thinking people who thought that a building for a public museum should have been majestic, and especially among artisans of traditional art-crafts in Kanazawa. But yet, the thoughts of the then mayor with hope of the popularity among all the citizens including the traditional artisans was consistent, then the curators of the museum had to struggle with the interaction between contemporary art and the traditional art-craft under the surface of the popularity of travelers and normal citizens.

Of course visitors had no way of knowing about such a struggle under the surface, nonetheless, it may be that the interaction between contemporary art and the traditional art-crafts have contributed to the museum as a good transition for the development of the museum and an innovation of the traditional art-crafts.

As a University of art

Artisans of the traditional art-crafts are perusing their narrow aesthetic with the traditional thoughts and the methods in their art-craft regions. Actually, it is a straight path to achieve the beauty of the art-crafts while repetitively making many crafts. Necessarily, they are kind of conservative and live in a small society. For them it may be natural to oppose contemporary art which has a strong evolutional intention to make art out of all of preexisting arts. The two are like oil and water, so co-works of the interaction were difficult.

Yuji Akimoto, who is a famous curator of contemporary art and was the second organizer of the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art. Kanazawa, held many challenging exhibitions between contemporary art and the art-craft.

He said that art was only one and the only one got universality before the assumption of office. According to his thoughts, contemporary art necessarily has to progress to get universality of the only one. Conversely, the art-craft is a small crystal in a culture, I think. For example, all art-crafts in Kanazawa are crystals of the culture of the Kaga Clan, which was the second biggest clan next to the Tokugawa Bakufu in the Edo period. The universality of art-crafts is not in each themselves but dependent on the culture. As a result the art-crafts live in the air of the culture which decreases like heat haze depending on time-passing. Thus, traditional art-crafts need a chance to refresh itself. The encounter with contemporary art may generate a new horizon of the universality of art by chance. Of course, for contemporary art as well.