MIHO MUSEUM IN THE MOUNTAINS

Its been a while since I put up any images around here. Perhaps I've reached that stage in expatriate disenchantedment where nothing is as surprising to me as it used to be. No, there still is - plenty, in fact - but I'm used to being surprised?

Not as surprised as I was yesterday when Miyoko took Keely and myself to Shiga for the day to spend it at Miho Museum. It is the largest privately owned art & culture museum owned in Japan - and they even had architectural legend I. M. Pei (the man responsible for Le Grand Louvre and its spectacular pyramid) design the museum to contain the collection. What's so demmed amazing? Musuems and galleries in Japan are hardly anything like back home where art permeates through the whole visual experience, no extension of the modern installation-art-in-spacial design. That is, until you lay eyes on this beauty. I was truly in awe and mind you, it takes a lot to surprise me here nowadays.

It took six years to gain permission to set the museum in the national reserve mountains of Shiga and 80% of the museum is underground - part of Pei's project to harmonize the building with the surrounding landscape - all of it is naturally lit! (Except for soft-focus lights on the displays - and even then he makes subtle use of skylights!)

And then the collection! Some of these works have been on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art NY, The British Museum and the Howard Carter Exhibitions. Yet, admission was a trifle Y800 (I paid Y1800 for the Flanders exhibition at the Met Museum Tokyo in a very unimpressive building!). Thank goodness for philantrophic Japanese families.

Expecting to be surprised again my Mikyoko, I'm going to make the trek to Kyoto this arvo.

Audio: Feeling way too damned good by Nickleback on Power98.fm.
Biblio: A Short History of The World by Bill Bryson.
Cerebrio: Things are seeming to looking up!