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'Artelligent' Living: Japan's New Roppongi Hills Complex
| Article
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23305 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
9 / 2003 |
2,308 Words |
| Author
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Iris Brooks
Iris Brooks, based in Upper Nyack, New York, has written about
music festivals on five continents. Her book New Music Across
America, celebrating contemporary American music festivals,
was published by the California Institute of the Arts. |
Imagine a television studio with a six-story glass atrium overlooking traditional Japanese gardens, or a nine-screen cinema complex with an earthquake-resistant roof planted with rice paddies, or an elevator whose floor lights change color on every story as you ascend to an art museum at the top of a towering skyscraper. The newly opened Roppongi Hills in Tokyo--just a fifteen-minute walk from the Imperial Palace--offers all this and more. An impressive urban redevelopment project and cultural mecca that covers 28.7 acres, the multiuse complex is a place for living, working, playing, shopping, thinking, learning, and creating.
"People want to get involved in art of their time," says David Elliott, the director of the Mori Art Museum, part of the Mori Arts center that occupies the top seven floors of the 54-story Roppongi Hills Mori Tower. Elliott, the first non-Japanese to direct an art museum in Japan, is the former director of the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford, England, and National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Stockholm, Sweden. He is interested in the dynamic relationships between art, culture, and life, and seeks to stimulate lively critical discussions and new ways of thinking about art. "My feeling is that people are hungry for something to happen," he says. "We are trying to find a new way to put people in touch with the art and culture of our times." Indeed, as the Mori has no permanent collection, there is no choice but to have a novel approach. Elliott, however, seems up to the task. His museum, like the rest of the Mori Arts Center, plans to remain open late every night. He believes, moreover, that a museum is not limited to four walls or an ivory (or metal-and-glass) tower, observing that "a museum is an attitude, an opening up, and a platform for
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