COVER STORY: The Way of Cool

Exploring the Arts from All Directions

Located in the Ishikawa Prefecture city of Kanazawa, the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa is garnering worldwide attention. Shin Sakurai asks director Yuji Akimoto about its appeal.



Kanazawa in Ishikawa Prefecture, an ancient city that still has pockets of traditional culture. In October 2004, the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, which exhibits leading-edge contemporary art, opened close to Kenrokuen Garden, a feudal lords’ garden which throws light on the culture of Kaga Hyakumangoku. Five years have passed since the museum’s opening, and it is now a popular site boasting visitor numbers in excess of 1.5 million people each year, a total of over 7.7 million to date.

Among the popular works exhibited is “The Swimming Pool,” by Leandro Erlich, which gives the viewer the impression that people are walking in deep water. In fact, it is a simple structure using glass to separate above and below. The glass contains water, so that when the surface of the water is viewed from the top down or from the bottom up, the boundary between reality and unreality seems to blur, producing a curious sensation. James Turrell’s “Blue Planet Sky” is just a white room approximately 11 m square with a square opening in the middle of the ceiling. However, when you stand there and watch the sky changing from moment to moment, in this space the sky that you thought you were familiar with becomes art.

One of the major features of this art museum is the building designed by SANAA, two architects, Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, who garnered world attention in June this year after being awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize, said to be the Nobel Prize of the architectural world. The plentiful use of glass in the exterior walls and interior of the building allows natural light to enter the museum. The white-themed circular building has neither front nor back, and has four entrances on north, south, east and west to enable visitors to enter from any side. The design concept is “museum opened to the city like a park,” a shared space where people can comfortably gather. The museum even has a public zone that anyone can drop into casually at no charge and look at the exhibited works at their leisure.

“There are lots of people who visit not only for the exhibits, but also to appreciate this architecture, the space itself,” says Akimoto. “The artists too seem to be greatly inspired by the impression of transparency and sense of space this architecture offers. To mark the fifth anniversary of the museum’s opening, we held an exhibition of Olafur Eliasson, known for his works that make free use of color and light. For this, the artist exhibited works that responded to the unique space where the light from outside filters softly into the museum and the boundary between the interior and exterior of the building is ambiguous. The result was an exhibition that you would not see anywhere but here, a place that is integral to the building, and the event drew record numbers of visitors for the winter season. An increasing number of artists are also inspired by this building to want to exhibit here.”

Moreover, overseas artists say that the reason they rate this art museum highly is because it brings modern art and people’s lives into close proximity. It may be called a collection of various attempts, including setting up the aforementioned public zone, to make art a natural part of the everyday lives of the local people, through initiatives such as the Museum Cruise Project for elementary school students. This is no exclusive space for a small group of art lovers, but literally “an art museum opened to the city,” where a broad range of people from children to the elderly gather and experience the works in their own way.

Shin Sakurai is a freelance writer.