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JaparTs Thirst for Art

The economic 'miracle' of Japan. although dulled by the recession and real estate debacie of the early 1990s, gave rise to a formidable thirst for culture. Japan natu-rally had its share of museums of traditional art, although the country never had a coherent national museum policy. Even today the limited number of national museums receive Iow levels of financing from the government. Rather it is the prefec-toral, municipal and private museums that have sprung up across the country that have rightly given Japan the reputation as being one of the most active countries in terms of the creation of these institutions. The point of creating a museum in Japan, even morę than in other countries, is to symbolically announce the wealth or success of a city or company. For this reason, the new museums are often little morę than empty shells, but the shells tend to be grandiose. What better solution in such in-stances than to cali on famous architects to create spectacular buildings? The problem of the formation of the collections is often left in limbo, all the morę so because Japan does not really have a system for the proper university-level formation of cu-rators. Curators and museum directors, with some notable exceptions, are morę likely to be administrators than persons who have a real passion for art. All of this said, the Japanese taste for innovative architecture, and the quality of construttion, have meant that several new institutions are housed in truły remarkable buildings.

Tadao Ando, for example, thp Osaka-based master of concrete architecture, recently built the Naoshima Museum of Contemporary Art on an isolated island in the Inland Sea. Situated on a hilltop overlooking the heavily traveled waterways

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Herzog & de Meuron Tatę Gallery of Modem Art Bankside Power Station London, Great Britain, 1995-2000

Situated just opposite St Pauls Cathcdral on the Thames, the new Tatę Gallery facility in the former Bankside Power Station buildirtg will take advantage of the existmg space. and in particular the enor-mous turbinę hall, to exhibit the holdings of the Tatę in British and foreign modern art, with the basie collections of English art remaining in the older Millbank buildings.