2023.10.31 2023.11.10

What to see in Kanazawa 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa

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What’s maru-bii?

As the name suggests, 21st Century Museum is an art museum that collects modern art.

Besides, 21st Century Museum is locally called “Marubii”. “Maru” translates as circle, and “bii” is the nickname of museum. The logo represents a bird’s-eye view of the museum itself.

The designers were the architects, Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa. Unlike other museums, it is circular and has no main entrance or exterior wall, expressing the concept of a visitor-friendly museum.

Unique installation works in public zone

In the free zone, you can enjoy a collection of site-specific art that emphasizes the environment and location in its design. Many of the works are installations, and they are all created to give visitors something to experience, or to make use of the space itself.

Color Activity House by Olafur Eliasson

A wall of glass in the three primary colors of cyan, magenta, and yellow swirls around a single point. Even if you look at the same scenery, you can get a different feeling if you change your perspective and look outside.

Klangfeld Nr.3 fur Alina -Florian CLAAR

Each tube is a pair of two connected underground. The sound may be connected to tubes in unexpected places, giving the impression that it is wandering.

Wrapping -LAR / Fernando Romero

It is a plaything for children to play with. Because it uses pipes and mesh, it doesn’t feel heavy, like a balloon that’s about to burst. The six sticking outs look as if they were pushed outwards from the inside.

Installations full of deep insights in paid exhibition zone

Inside of 21st century museum, there are a lot of installation works which teach you something. Those inside of the museum, however, are contained in the paid exhibition zone. Therefore, in order to see those works, we are required to pay for the entrance fee of the occational exhibition no matter whether you intend to see it or not.

The Swimming Pool -Leandro ERLICH

It looks like it’s filled with real water, but it’s actually about 10 centimeters of water spread over transparent glass, leaving a light blue space beneath the glass. People inside the pool offer a unique experience of looking up from the water.

L’Origine du monde -Anish KAPOOR

Blue Planet Sky -James TURRELL

It enables us to experience the unusual experience to see the transformations of light via the rectangular hole in the center of the ceiling. The more time you spend there, the more sensitive you will become to our most subtle perceptions.