TWENTY YEARS: A WAYPOINT, AND A MILESTONE.
REVISITING THE MAM MISSION AND JOURNEYING BACK AND FORTH BETWEEN PAST,
PRESENT AND FUTURE.
The Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, will celebrate its twentieth anniversary in 2023. Our mission is to be a place dedicated to the contemporary and international, offering encounters with complex and diverse worlds. The past 20 years have seen monumental shifts in the world in which we live, both politically and economically, plus an increase in the number of serious natural disasters, a previously unimaginable pandemic, civil conflicts, and war. Contemporary art reflects all these, in all their aspects.
In the two exhibitions and myriad learning programs planned for the 2023 fiscal year, the Mori Art Museum will revisit its mission, and journey back and forth along the timeline of past, present and future. WORLD CLASSROOM: Contemporary Art through School Subjects , our exhibition scheduled for the first half of the anniversary year, will see contemporary art liberated from the "fine art" and "arts and crafts" categories of the classroom, and viewed instead as a domain with connections to all sorts of subjects that teach about the "world." The Mori Art Museum will then become a classroom for studying the world, accessible to all. It is also noteworthy that WORLD CLASSROOM will be the first exhibition where the Mori Art Museum Collection comprises more than half of the exhibited works in an originally-curated exhibition, providing an opportunity to look back on the museum's exhibitions to date. Then in the second half of the year 2023, Our Ecology will contemplate the challenges of global sustainability, including that of climate change as one of the most pressing issues facing the planet today, in an exhibition also touching on the history of ecology in contemporary art.
Twenty years may be no more than a waypoint on our journey, but it is still a milestone. Our intention is to make 2023 a year for looking ahead to the next two decades, as we reconsider yet again the role of the Mori Art Museum in these changing times.
Kataoka Mami, Director, Mori Art Museum
WORLD CLASSROOM: Contemporary Art through School Subjects
Period: April 19 [Wed] - September 24 [Sun], 2023
Our Ecology (Title TBD)
Period: October 18 [Wed], 2023 - March 31 [Sun], 2024
* Kindly note that Heatherwick Studio: Building Soulfulness exhibition period has been amended as follows:
Period (New): March 17 [Fri] - June 4 [Sun], 2023 Venue: Tokyo City View (52F, Roppongi Hills Mori Tower)