Member's Event

MAMC Night

The next MAMC Night, a series of events held exclusively for MAMC members, will pay attention to museum conservators, who play the behind-the-scenes role in the museum.

The jobs of conservator are to preserve and restore artworks in museums.

The range of the work varies widely depending on content and character of each exhibition. MAMC Night, which was held on January 2010, we introduced the job of the museum conservator, focusing on the important aspect of the job to maintain an environment within the museum and to exhibit the delicate work of the Leonard da Vinci pieces from “Medicine and Art”.

Most of viewers are not aware of that we exercise our ingenuity in maintaining the delicate sculptures in the current exhibition, "Odani Motohiko: Phantom-Limb."
However, this "naturalness" shows the conservators' great skills and difficulty of the conservation for contemporary art.
We unveil the job of the conservators along with practical talks.

In addition to the behind-the-scenes talk, Araki Natsumi (Curator, Mori Art Museum) will conduct a tour of the exhibition.

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*please note members and their guests must enter at the same time.

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*Japanese-English simultaneous interpretation
*For those who wish to join the tour and talk, please gather at the entrance hall on Mori Tower 53F five minutes prior to the announced starting time.
*Advance reservations are not necessary.

MAMC Annual Cocktail Party 2010

This year, we welcome PIRAMI, a composer as a special guest. She has known Odani Motohiko for a long time and composed music for his video artwork, "Rompers," which attracted great deal of attention at Venice Biennale 2003 - will also be exhibited at the upcoming exhibition, "Odani Motohiko: Phantom Limb," starting from Saturday, 27 November, 2010.
PIRAMI is an artisan of sound who produces ever-changing music.

PIRAMI started her own independent label, "Kuwagata Records Label" when she was in Tokyo University of the Arts , and she became popular through mass media. After that, PIRAMI joined for albums of Japanese top musicians such as UA and Double Famous as composer and arranger.
She has expanded a wide range of activities and projects, including R&D/Audio Lead for X-box, "DoReMi-TV" of NHK - Japan Broadcasting Corporation - as a supervisor (Good Design Award Prize) as well as fashion show, opera, movie and contemporary art.

We will hold a special cello live with PIRAMI at the party.
Her arranged cello sound in style contemporary will stir your imagination as it blends with Odani's artworks. Her artistic performance is a must-listen!

Moreover,we will give you more details of the Mori Art Museum's exhibitions held in 2011 in the party.

You will get a special discount to join the party if you bring guests.

We are very much looking forward to spending time with you away from the busy season New Year!

[Details]

PIRAMI'S PROFILES
http://www.pirami.org/profile.pdf

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ENQUIRIES

MAMC, Mori Art Museum Membership Program
E-mail: mamc@mori.art.museum
Tel: 03-6406-6123 (10:00-18:00, weekdays only)

Event Report

An new end of year tradition: the MAMC Annual Cocktail Party

At the Mori Art Museum, we place tremendous value on the contributions made to our activities by the members of our MAMC membership program. As an expression of our thanks, each December we hold the MAMC Annual Cocktail Party. Last year, it was held on Tuesday, 14 December.

The evening began with a tour of the current exhibition, “Odani Motohiko: Phantom Limb,” led by exhibition curator Araki Natsumi. “Odani studied sculpture at the Tokyo University of the Arts,” Araki explained. “Most people think of sculpture as some kind of physical form that has been carved out of a large, heavy material. But Odani is not so interested in physical forms as much as in giving expression in various media to mere suggestions of such forms or even things that are amorphous or invisible.”

Phantom Limb is a series of photographs depicting girls who appear to have had their hands severed. Double Edged of Thought (Dress 02) is a dress woven from human hair. No. 44 depicts bubbles made partly from the artist’s own blood. And there were many other highlights. “Each of the works tends to elicit emotions of fear and thrill. But at the same time, they also convey the dignity of life,” she explained.

After enjoying the exhibition, it was time for the party to begin. Among the guests were MAMC Honorary Member Françoise Moréchand and also visitors from New York’s Museum of Modern Art. It was museum director Nanjo Fumio who proposed the toast. “Many of you will remember the tour we organized this year to see the Aichi Triennale. I hope to hold more events like that in 2011. In fact, we are in the process of planning a big art tour right now, but I can’t reveal details tonight. It’s something I think we can all look forward to.”

There was much diversity in the members present – in terms of gender, age-group and profession. But they all shared a love of art and hence conversation quickly spread throughout the room as everyone enjoyed the snacks and drinks on hand.

Soon Miyatsu Daisuke, who manages to combine his work as a salaryman with art collecting, was handed the microphone to introduce the two art fairs that will be held shortly in Tokyo. “It’s not just at museums that you can see cutting edge art, but at galleries, too,” he explained. Miyatsu introduced Ferrier Toshiko, the director of G-tokyo, which will be held in February at the Mori Arts Center Gallery and will feature 15 Tokyo galleries that focus on contemporary art. Next, Miyatsu introduced Kaneshima Takahiro, the executive director of Art Fair Tokyo, which will be held in April at the Tokyo International Forum and will feature 135 domestic and international galleries that cover everything from classical to contemporary art. Ferrier and Kaneshima greeted the party guests and then delivered early Christmas presents to all those present by announcing that entry to their respective fairs would be free for MAMC members.

Now that we were talking about 2011, Nanjo Fumio next gave brief descriptions of the exhibitions scheduled for the year at the Mori Art Museum. He entertained guests with humorous accounts of how the exhibitions were chosen and also how the various exhibition titles were determined.

And then it was time for the climax. The musician Pirami, who composed the music for Odani’s video work Rompers, which is included in the exhibition, took to the stage to deliver a live cello performance. Pirami delighted the guests by actively involving them in her performance. For instance, having brought along two different bows, she played a little using each and then asked the audience to vote on which they’d like her to continue playing with. Later, she announced she would play six pieces of music by Bach, but that one of them would be a “fake” that she had composed herself. The challenge was to guess which the imposter was.

And last of all, museum general manager Takahashi Shinya was handed the microphone. He encouraged all those present to join with the museum in enlivening the local art scene even more in the future. And, with that, a lively evening of art appreciation, a cello performance and of course cocktails came to an end.