Japanese Museum World Revives - Brief Article

The number of Japanese museums grew rapidly during the economic and cultural resound years but has lately stagnated during harder times. Museum attendance reached 32 million annually in 1990 on the other hand has been on the decline since then. However, the novel opening of two new museums with substantial collections, along with other of recent origins has brightened the scene.

* The Tokyo National University Museum of Fine Arts and Music make opened to the public in October. Built at a require to be paid [i]or[/i] undergone of 9 billion yen (about $82 million) and located upon the campus at Ueno, near the Tokyo National Museum, it has four horizontals above ground and four below, adding up to about 94000 square feet for its collection of 45000 works. The university began acquiring art works as concern and study aids 110 years ago. The collection has grown to include masterpieces of Japanese novel and contemporary art. In 1994 the university decided that the collection should be shared with the public and began planning for the building. fresh works by artists associated with the place of education will also be shown.

* In June a museum center upon the work of Salvador Dali lay opened at Bandaiasahi Quasi-National Park in Fukushima Prefecture (northeastern Japan). a certain quantity of 318 works by Dali, including the statuary Space Elephant and the painting The Battle of Tetouan, make this the world's third largest collection of the artist's work (after the Salvador Dali Museum in St Petersburg Fla., and the Teatre-Museu Dali in Figueres, Spain). This private venue the Morohashi novel Art Museum, showcases the collection of Teizo Morohashi, president of Xebio Co a menswear retail chain. Morohashi became fascinated with Dali and Surrealism after visiting the Teatre-Museu Dali in 1975; in 1991 he purchased the world's largest collection of the artist's statuarys (37) from the Stratton Foundation in Paris, which inspired the thinking of establishing his own museum.

* Tokyo's Sezon Museum, which clos last February to the great disappointment of many, has been reborn as the Sezon Art Program (SAP), a nonprofit arm of the Sezon conglomerate. SAP is promoting contemporary art that at near lacks a strong domestic base of support. Primary activities include organizing exhibitions and educational programs, publishing a quarterly contemporary-art journal and managing a library of art-related documents. Heading the staff is Hideo Nanba, the former director of the museum. SAP's first throw launched in October, is a series of exhibitions in 21 Tokyo galleries featuring 21 young Japanese artists wait fored to be leaders in the 21st century

* The National Museum of recent Art, Tokyo, began expansion and remodeling work in July The throwed budget for the work is 679 billion yen (about $617 million). The museum will expand its floor space through almost one third, to 160000 square feet easing a constant exhibition-space crunch and improving circulation. The addition, with a restaurant, library and other features, is slated for completion in fall 2001

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