The Mori isn’t just another place to admire van Goghs. When it opens, it will be the world’s tallest museum, occupying the top two floors of a 54-story tower in downtown Tokyo which will anchor a major commercial and residential development project, the brainchild of billionaire builder Minoru Mori. The museum will also benefit from a high-profile partnership with New York’s Museum of Modern Art, paying an undisclosed sum for access to MoMA’s permanent collection, plus consultation on gallery design, exhibition planning and installation.
While Western directors and senior curators at top museums may hop from one country to the next, Japan has rarely been a stopping point. For centuries Japanese have prided themselves on their artistic sensitivities, repeating the claim that they are so unique that no foreigner is capable of understanding their culture. When American Alexandra Munroe organized a survey of postwar Japanese art for the Yokohama Museum in 1994, art critics pounced. “[Foreign curators] are incapable of understanding the physiological depth of Japanese artists,” wrote one.
That attitude is beginning to change, thanks to the achievements of gaijin in other fields. When Brazilian-born Carlos Ghosn took over the stalled Nissan Motor Co. in 1999 and turned it around within two years, he became a national hero. More recently French soccer coach Philippe Troussier led the Japanese team, which had previously not won a single World Cup match, to the Cup’s second round. Explaining his choice of Elliott over Japanese candidates, Mori said last year that given the recent misfortunes of many Japanese museums, dozens of which are going out of business every year, it was “time to bring in outside know-how.”
Elliott has been out of place before. After serving as director of Oxford’s Museum of Modern Art for 20 years, he became the first non-Swede to hold the top job at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, expanding the museum from a Western-focused institution into a showcase for contemporary art from around the world. In some ways Elliott, a famously unpretentious man known for wearing a bomber jacket instead of a suit and tie to museum openings, sees his mission at the Mori as just the opposite: elevating the profile of Asian, and particularly Japanese, contemporary art in a country that worships Monet and Renoir. Avant-garde works have long been dismissed here as abstruse and unattractive, with local museums preferring to show traditional Japanese scrolls and impressionist paintings. “There is no shortage of talent here,” argues Elliott. “But it isn’t formed, directed nor disseminated, and it’s one of our roles to provide a platform for creativity and talent.” To ensure “a sense of rootedness” for his programs, Mori has hired two Japanese, prominent curator Fumio Nanjo and art dealer Kenjiro Shinohara, as his deputies.
Elliott’s main challenges stem from the character of the Mori museum, not Japan. Logistically, for example, bringing gigantic sculptures and installation works to the top of the skyscraper will be impossible. And the fact that the museum has no collection of its own could be a liability because museums customarily exchange pieces in their collections.
Elliott remains unfazed. “I wouldn’t have moved here unless I was attracted to the job,” he says. He and his staff already have several projects in the works, including an inaugural show where artists from around the world will explore the theme of happiness, and an exhibition, planned for the summer of 2004, that will display masterpieces from MoMA’s permanent collection. Local experts have high hopes. Japan has long suffered from a cultural trade imbalance–worshiping and importing Western art but failing to adequately present Japanese arts overseas. In this area, Elliott has already started to make a difference. Earlier this year, the museum sponsored a video-art competition and has been exhibiting prize winners at a site nearby. Peter Klaus Schuster, director general of Staatliche Museen Zu Berlin Preussischer, who happened to be visiting Elliott, saw the video presentation and was so impressed he arranged to have it shown at Berlin’s Museum of East Asian Art next month. “That’s a good first step,” says Elliott. Considering the Mori hasn’t even opened yet, there should be many more to come.
