Wednesday, January 22, 2025

Nariwa Art Museum by Ando Tadao

 


Sometimes known as Takahashi City Nariwa Art Museum as the town of Nariwa was incorporated into Takahashi in 2004


Nariwa lie to the east of the old part of Takahashi, along the Nariwa River before it enters the takahashi River.


The Nariwa Art Museum was established in 1953, but the current building was opened in 1994.


It was designed by the renowned Japanese architect Ando Tadao.


One of the intriguing aspects of Japan, for me, is finding huge, modern, public buildings like museums or auditoriums in small rural towns.


many of these were funded by a program born in the pre-bubble era when, in many senses,  Japan had more mone than it knew what to do with.


What it did was give every single municipality a massive chunk of money which mostly got spent on such projects as this.


By now many of these establishments have gone bust, but this one is still going.


The main focus of the museum is a local-born artist, Kojima Torajiro (1881-1929) generally considered to be primarily an Impressionist.


Also exhibited are a collection of Egyptian artifacts collected by Kojima, and fossils from the Nariwa area.


The museum also stages temporary exhibitions throughout the year. It has a shop and a cafe.


For those without a particular interest in the exhibitions will find the architecture interesting enough by itself.


It is classic Ando, with huge expanses of plain, vertical; concrete. When freshly constructed and almost white it is quite powerful, but I wonder how Ando's buildings will look in another twenty years of built-up grime?


There is also plentiful use of water to bring in the natural environment by reflection.


There is also an inner pool faced by the cafe.


As with many of Ando's structures they are quite labyrinthic leading the visitor in and out of spaces.


The previous post in this series on Takahashi was on the old town architecture.


Other buildings by Ando I have posted on include the Inamori Auditorium in Kagoshima, Komyoji Temple on Shikoku, and the Decorative Tumulus Museum in Kumamoto.


4 comments:

  1. 'Mesmerizing' is the word I'd use to describe these photos - I unconsciously ended up staring at them for longer than I meant to!

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  2. thanks so much !
    Gabi from Okayama
    .

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  3. Has touches of the water museum that you took us to years ago. So peaceful. So beautiful.

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