Tokyo, Japan! - Art

Watari Museum of Contemporary Art

The description Lonely Planet gives of the Watari Museum of Contemporary Art: "Known as the Watarium, this place showcases lots of brilliant conceptual and performance art, with visiting Scandinavians choreographing ballets involving vacuum-cleaners, and resident Japanese embalming themselves with glue. Ergo, lots of cutting edge contemporary art can be found here, especially mixed media art installations."


Sounds awesome, right? WRONG! It was, without question, the worst museum either of us have ever been to. We would not use the words 'brilliant' or 'art' to describe anything inside this building. It should have been a red flag when we saw clothes from Uniqlo (Japanese H&M) in the gift shop. At least, on the day we went, we only had to pay a discounted rate to get in, and not full price.

Here were the best two things in the Watari...

4475g - 2008 - photo on paper

"You can see a cat and it's weight at the same time."

sculpture (building) of 4475g - 2010 - paper clay

"A sculpture weighs exactly the same as
a cat I saw in a market in Costa Rica."

This 'artist' took a picture of a cat sitting on a scale while on vacation in Costa Rica, then 2 years later recreated the cat's mass with clay and called it a sculpture. And it was not a sculpture in any way. He just stacked the most slabs of clay onto a scale without going over 4475g, then added little bits to the top until he reached 4475g. If anyone is looking to have some 'art' displayed, give the Watari Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo a call. You're a shoe in!

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The Mori Art Museum

Getting ready to go to another art museum, wearing the couple watches we bought at Kiddyland...

Mmmmm, a pâté and cornichon baguette for breakfast!


Judy went with a croque-madame

Our tickets into the Mori also got us
into the Mori Tower Obseratory

The view from Mori Tower

It was so bright that Andrew couldn't fully open his eyes

His eyes watered for nearly 10 minutes into the museum!

Inside an installation

The way it's set up, you walk into a room underneath what looks like a giant back-lit papier-mâché fort. There is just a yellowy glow and an organic shape to the paper above your head. All of the sudden, you come to a little hole in the ceiling, stick your head through, and you're in the middle of a papier-mâché birch for forest. It was pretty neat.

Judy above and below

The Mori, as we knew, proved to actually be an art museum. Some other notable exhibits we saw were a wave machine made with feathers instead of water and a really awesome series of everyday objects carved from solid crystals. There were no photographs of cats on scales or a block of clay weighing the same as a cat anywhere inside the museum, weird...