The National Museum of Art, Osaka
Words, voices and images: Connecting to cultures around the world
“To collect, store, and publicly display the artworks and resources, and conduct the related research and other projects needed to elucidate the relationship between developments in Japanese art and art from the rest of the world".
The National Museum of Art in Osaka was opened in late 1997 as the fourth national museum in Japan. The building was originally designed as the Exposition Museum of Fine Arts at Osaka’s Expo 70 and was then redeveloped to its current use.
In 1978 many of the gallery’s initial dilemmas, as a result of budget constraints and the expense of establishing the kind of international collection the directors had hoped for, were solved by a generous donation by the family of Kaichi Ohashi, following the art collector’s death.
828 works were donated at that time.
Today, the National Museum of Art in Osaka has a significant collection of artworks including prints, paintings, photography, sculptures and works of industrial design with a strength in the collection, its post war era art.
At the time of our visit to Osaka, the special exhibitions included Collection 2 at the museum on the theme of "Recollection," bringing together a selection of works from the museum collection related to three key concepts: Actions /Traces /, Memory / History /, Movement / Space/.
A major exhibition at the time of our visit was very familiar to us The Great Terracotta Army of China's First Emperor. This exhibition was of course about the great Shaanxi treasure discovered in 1974 by Yang Zhifa as they dug wells in Xian.
“At first the digging went well. The second day we hit hard red earth. The third day, my hoe dug out the neck of a terracotta statue without a head, but the opening at the bottom was about the size of a bowl. I commented to my workmate that it was probably the site of an old kiln. He advised me to dig carefully, so that we’d be able to dig out any old jars and take them home for our own use”.
Yang had discovered one of the greatest archaeological treasures discovered in the twentieth century, Emperor Qin Shi Huang's Terracotta Army. The National Museum of Art’s exhibition featured recently excavated objects.
I want to quickly return to the Collection 2 exhibition to describe the work On‘ moon’ score. This is a work by Nomura Hitoshi made by taking photos of the moon and a musical stave (staff) copied on to 35 mm film. Rewinding the unexposed film, Nomura then photographed the moon each night when it was visible with a telescopic lens. A photographic panel of the moon and stave was then produced, the moon's phase was used to determine the length of the tone while the moon’s position on the stave was used to determine pitch. The result was then turned into a score and performed. These recordings are part of this haunting piece of work by Nomura Hitoshi.
In 1978 many of the gallery’s initial dilemmas, as a result of budget constraints and the expense of establishing the kind of international collection the directors had hoped for, were solved by a generous donation by the family of Kaichi Ohashi, following the art collector’s death.
828 works were donated at that time.
Today, the National Museum of Art in Osaka has a significant collection of artworks including prints, paintings, photography, sculptures and works of industrial design with a strength in the collection, its post war era art.
At the time of our visit to Osaka, the special exhibitions included Collection 2 at the museum on the theme of "Recollection," bringing together a selection of works from the museum collection related to three key concepts: Actions /Traces /, Memory / History /, Movement / Space/.
A major exhibition at the time of our visit was very familiar to us The Great Terracotta Army of China's First Emperor. This exhibition was of course about the great Shaanxi treasure discovered in 1974 by Yang Zhifa as they dug wells in Xian.
“At first the digging went well. The second day we hit hard red earth. The third day, my hoe dug out the neck of a terracotta statue without a head, but the opening at the bottom was about the size of a bowl. I commented to my workmate that it was probably the site of an old kiln. He advised me to dig carefully, so that we’d be able to dig out any old jars and take them home for our own use”.
Yang had discovered one of the greatest archaeological treasures discovered in the twentieth century, Emperor Qin Shi Huang's Terracotta Army. The National Museum of Art’s exhibition featured recently excavated objects.
I want to quickly return to the Collection 2 exhibition to describe the work On‘ moon’ score. This is a work by Nomura Hitoshi made by taking photos of the moon and a musical stave (staff) copied on to 35 mm film. Rewinding the unexposed film, Nomura then photographed the moon each night when it was visible with a telescopic lens. A photographic panel of the moon and stave was then produced, the moon's phase was used to determine the length of the tone while the moon’s position on the stave was used to determine pitch. The result was then turned into a score and performed. These recordings are part of this haunting piece of work by Nomura Hitoshi.
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