Mori Art Museum
Photo: Mori Art Museum, Tokyo
  • Art
  • Roppongi
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Mori Art Museum

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Time Out says

The exhibitions are world-class, focused mainly on contemporary culture, but the secrets of the Mori Art Museum’s success are location (part of the phenomenally popular Roppongi Hills), location (on the 52nd and 53rd floors of the Mori Tower, offering spectacular views) and location (within a two-floor ‘experience’ that includes a bar, cafe, shop and panoramic observation deck). One ticket allows access to all areas, and the late opening hours maximise accessibility.

Exhibitions are deliberately varied, with past offerings including Bill Viola’s video art, a survey of the Middle Eastern art world and the periodic 'Roppongi Crossing' group shows for Japanese artists. The vista from Tokyo City View isn’t quite 360°, and it’s expensive compared to the free Tokyo Metropolitan Government building observatory, but the views are arguably better, especially at night with a drink in your hand from Mado Lounge. If you don't mind paying an extra ¥500, you take a short elevator ride to the rooftop Sky Deck, and take in an even better – not to mention rather breezier – vista.

Details

Address
Mori Tower 53F, 6-10-1 Roppongi, Minato
Tokyo
Transport:
Roppongi Station (Hibiya, Oedo lines), exit 1
Opening hours:
10am-8pm (last entry 7.30pm)

What’s on

Louise Bourgeois: I Have Been to Hell and Back. And Let Me Tell You, It Was Wonderful

French-born artist Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) has long loomed large over Roppongi Hills: her outdoor sculpture of a gigantic spider, named ‘Maman’, is a local landmark. The sprawling development’s Mori Art Museum, then, is a fitting venue for this major retrospective of one of the most important artists of the past century. As explored by Bourgeois’ first large-scale Japanese solo exhibition in over 25 years, fear was an ongoing motivation over her seven-decade career. This fear, however, was not the arachnophobia that one might suppose, given the formidable ‘Maman’. Rather, Bourgeois’ work was driven in part by fear of abandonment; something rooted in her complex and sometimes traumatic childhood. Through her famed oversized sculptures, installations, drawings, paintings and other mediums, she confronted painful personal memories while simultaneously channelling them into work that expresses universal emotions and psychological states. Across three exhibition ‘chapters’ that each explore a different aspect of family relationships, highlights include the ‘Femme Maison’ series of paintings from the 1940s. These works, which decades later were championed by the feminist movement, each depict a female figure whose top half is obscured by a house which protects yet imprisons her. Bourgeois’ extensive use of the spider motif, meanwhile, is examined in depth. As hinted at by the landmark ‘Maman’ (the French equivalent of ‘mummy’), for Bourgeois the spider was symbolic of the moth

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