Nakanoshima Museum of Art, Osaka Audio Guide

Nakanoshima Museum of Art: what does the audio guide cover?

1. 01

   Welcome to Nakanoshima Museum of Art, Osaka

   Welcome to Nakanoshima Museum of Art, Osaka, known in Japanese as Osaka Nakanoshima Bijutsukan. You are standing in Nakanoshima, the long, narrow island in the heart of the city, in the fourth district of Kita Ward. The museum opened on the second of February, 2022, which makes it one of the newest major art museums in Japan. Look up and you will see a huge dark box that seems to hover above the ground. That image is the first thing most visitors remember. Inside is a collection of modern and contemporary art and design running from the second half of the nineteenth century to the present day, with more than 6,000 works. Over the next few stops I will tell you how this building came to exist after decades of false starts. I will explain why it has no front door, and I will point out the artists who give the collection its character, from Paris to Osaka itself.

2. 02

   A Long Road to Opening: Nakanoshima Museum of Art, Osaka

   This museum took a surprisingly long time to arrive. The idea of a modern art museum for Osaka goes back decades, and the city's collection grew far faster than any building to show it. The planned site was the former Osaka University medical school land, just north of the National Museum of Art, Osaka. The thinking was that a museum's crowds could make up for the energy Nakanoshima lost when the medical school moved away. The city bought that national land for 16 billion yen. The purchase came with a condition: if the city failed to build a museum by a set year, or put the land to another use, it would owe the state a penalty of 4.8 billion yen. A basic plan in 1998 imagined a building of 24,000 square meters. Then the project stalled, partly because the remains of old storehouse residences were excavated on the site, and partly because of financial trouble. In 2011 the plan was scrapped at the mayor's wish. The story restarted in 2013, when the city decided once again to build in Nakanoshima. In 2017 the design by Endo Katsuhiko Architects was chosen. The name Nakanoshima Museum of Art, Osaka was settled in 2018, and the doors finally opened in 2022.

3. 03

   The Passage and the Floating Box: Nakanoshima Museum of Art, Osaka

   The big idea behind the architecture is the passage. In French, the word means a covered walkway or arcade that anyone can wander through freely. Osaka's design competition asked for exactly that at the heart of the museum: a lively indoor space open to people of all ages, not only ticket holders. Architects from around the world submitted proposals. The result is a building with no front. There are several entrances, so people can drift in from any direction, like a continuation of the street. The passage itself is a vast open atrium, 30.9 meters high, running from the first floor up through the ceiling of the fifth. Anyone can step into it, whether or not they are visiting an exhibition. Now look at that dark box again. The third, fourth and fifth floors form a single structure, and it appears to float because it rests on slender columns below, with no heavy, obvious pillars. On the second level there is a lawn plaza of about 1,000 square meters and a pedestrian deck. It links the museum to the neighboring National Museum of Art, Osaka, and to other points around Nakanoshima.

4. 04

   Saeki, Modigliani and Gutai: The Collection of Nakanoshima Museum of Art, Osaka

   The collection here grew from the modern and contemporary works the city of Osaka built up over the years. Unlike the city's other art museum in Tennoji, which covers ancient and Asian art, this museum focuses on art from the nineteenth century onward. The star with the deepest local roots is Saeki Yuzo, a painter with close ties to Osaka. The museum holds the largest collection of his work in Japan, alongside other artists connected to the School of Paris. Among the international names are Amedeo Modigliani, famous here for a reclining nude, as well as Constantin Brancusi, Gerhard Richter, Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Frank Stella. The poster collection includes works by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Alphonse Mucha. Osaka's own avant-garde has a strong place too. Works by Yoshihara Jiro, founder of the Gutai Art Association, are a highlight. The museum also collects design. Together with Panasonic and the Kyoto Institute of Technology, it has pursued a project that records the memories and products of Osaka's home appliance and industrial design makers, starting in 2014.

5. 05

   Before You Head Off from Nakanoshima Museum of Art, Osaka

   Before you go, try walking around the building rather than just through it. Because there is no front, each side gives you a different first impression. Notice how the dark box seems to hang above you, and how the lawn plaza and the pedestrian deck tie the museum into its neighbors on the island. And keep one question in mind for the galleries: what does a city choose to collect, and what does that say about its own artists? In Osaka, the answer runs from Saeki's streets to the experiments of Gutai, and there is more waiting inside.