Tokyo Blossoms: Deutsche Bank Collection meets Zaha Hadid

When visiting this exhibition, there are two points to bear in mind.
Firstly, the exhibition space is designed by Zaha Hdid,,one of the most stimulating architects in contemporary architecture. Zaha Hadid is well-known as the first woman to have won the prestigious Pritzker Prize in 2004. The floating and ephemeral image of her works makes us feel free from gravity. And this time, the museum as a space is covered – better to say, wrapped- with her concept, “a handkerchief flattering down to the ground”, even though one cannot realize it at first glance. Arata Isozaki, a Japanese architect with a world-wide reputation, describes her as follows,

Zaha’s charater is to arrange the floating forms as if a gravity-free space generated. And objects are floating, this is the most important element to figure out her architecture.

In this exhibition, we can feel the whole space of Hara Museum designed by Zaha Studio and especially, in the courtyard, there stands Zaha’s monumental installation as a part of the handkerchief, which means this is the first opportunity to meet her object in Japan.

Secondly, this exhibition is based on a single company’s private collection – “Deutsche Bank Collection”. According to Dr. Ariane Grigoteit, the curator of Deutsche Bank Collection, its collection is comprises more than 50,000 works of art and is well-known for its high quality in contemporary art. Amazingly, the annual budget for “art” is approximately 9 millions €. This means that if we consider Deutsche Bank Collection as a museum, its vitality is much better than those of Japanese public museums. What should we think of this situation? On top of that, their consistent policy, “Art at work” sounds quite interesting, as this is a relatively new and effective channel which museums have not taken advantage of to mediate art in our society. Anyway, the amazing essence of the collection will be waiting for you.

p.s. Hara Museum of Contemporary Art is famous for its sophisticated museum café “Café d’art”. This café is not inexpensive but is a perfect place to go out. How about spending a beautiful spring day at Hara Museum ?