Making museums a mirror of the times

When I meet with foreign museum officials and art collectors visiting Japan, they often ask where they can see contemporary Japanese art and whether there are permanent exhibits of such works. Unfortunately, I usually find myself saying, "We don't have such facilities yet".

As far as contemporary art is concerned, new artists are emerging who can demonstrate the richness and fun of art in the true sense. Japan also has a growing number of art museums. Despite these favorable conditions surrounding art, the relationship between artworks and the facilities that show them is not good. I attribute this situation to three failures concerning art museums and propose ways to overcome them.

The first is the way museums have been built-as an extension of "pork-barrel public works projects".