Art Week Tokyo has announced a stellar lineup of participants for its inaugural edition. The event organized by Japan Contemporary Art Platform in cooperation with CADAN (Contemporary Art Dealers Association Nippon) will begin on November the 4th 2021 and run through till the 7th and feature a series of events and exhibitions across Tokyo.
Participating Venues
Some fifty venues are taking part, including forty-four of the city’s leading commercial galleries and six major museums dedicated to modern and contemporary art.
Venues are located across Tokyo and will be connected by Art Mobile a collection of four bus routes servicing various parts of the city. Each route will connect between 11 and 15 venues, and multiple buses will run each hour. Bus routes take in Roppingi, Ginza and the larger Omote-Sando area.
Selected venues reflect the diversity of the Tokyo art scene. Established, homegrown galleries that helped build a new market for contemporary art in the 1990s, such as SCAI the Bathhouse, Ota Fine Arts, and Gallery Koyanagi, are featured alongside branches of international galleries, such as Blum & Poe and Perrotin.
Participants with a commitment to showing photography and film-based media include Taka Ishii Gallery, MEM, and PGI, while those with a focus on postwar avant-garde art include Yumiko Chiba Associates and Fergus McCaffery Tokyo. Also participating in the programming will be young and emerging galleries such as Aoyama Meguro, Misako & Rosen, Mujin-to Production, and Take Ninagawa. Artist-run spaces range from Takashi Murakami’s Kaikai Kiki Gallery to 4649, Fig., and XYZ collective. CADAN will also feature a gallery from outside of Tokyo—rin art association of Takasaki—at its Yurakucho space.
Galleries
- Gallery 38
- 4649
- Aoyama Meguro
- Anomaly
- Waiting room
- XYZ Collective
- MEM
- Ota Fine Arts
- Kaikai Kiki Gallery
- Kanakawa Nishi Gallery
- Kayoko Yuki
- Kodama Gallery
- Kotaro Nukaga
- Gallery Koyanagi
- Tomio Koyama Gallery
- Gallery side 2
- The Club
- ShugoArts
- Skai the bathhouse
- Taka Ishii Gallery
- Taguchi Fine Art
- Take Ninagawa
- Talion Gallery
- Taro NASU
- Tokyo Gallery + BTAP
- Nanzuka Underground
- Nichido Contemporary Art
- Hagiwara Projects
- PGI
- Fergus McCaffrey Tokyo
- Figi Your
- Bram & Po
- Perrotin Tokyo
- Poetic scape
- Maki Fine Arts
- Mahoku Bota Gallery
- Misako & Rosen
- Missassin Gallery
- Mizuma Art Gallery
- Mujinto Production
- Yuka Tsuruno Gallery
- Yutaka Kikutake Gallery
- Yumiko Chiba Associates
- Rin Art Association @ CADAN Yurakucho
Museums
- Artizon Museum
- Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery
- National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo
- Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography
- Mori Arts Center
- Watarium Art Museum
Online Talks
Arts Initiative Tokyo, a curatorial collective and alternative art education organization, has organised a series of online talks which will be held in the run-up to Art Week Tokyo. Speakers include Mami Kataoka, director of the Mori Art Museum; Tokyo-based art writer, editor, and translator Andrew Maerkle; and Roger McDonald, deputy director of Arts Initiative Tokyo.
Artist Mieko Shiomi will give a special talk on her career working across the fields of art, performance, and music.
Art Basel
Art Week Tokyo is organized with support from Art Basel, the world’s leading fair for modern and contemporary art, with editions in Basel, Hong Kong, and Miami Beach. Art Basel’s involvement reflects Art Week Tokyo’s commitment to producing an event with a global scope.
Atsuko Ninagawa, Owner and Director of Take Ninagawa and Founding Director of Art Week Tokyo, said: “As a communally driven and inclusive platform for collaboration between artists, galleries, museums, and other contributors, Art Week Tokyo will be a unique celebration of the creativity and diversity of contemporary art in Japan. This inaugural edition features a truly amazing lineup of participants, and the support of a global organization like Art Basel is important for strengthening the ties between Japan and the international community. We are excited to show the best of what Tokyo’s art scene has to offer.”
“We are thrilled to support the organizers of Art Week Tokyo on their inaugural 2021 edition. Tokyo is one of the world’s most dazzling cities, a key destination for art and culture,” says Adeline Ooi, Director Asia at Art Basel. “We’re honored to be part of this exciting and timely effort to bring the world’s attention to Tokyo’s dynamic contemporary art scene, home to some of the longest-running and most respected galleries and institutions in Asia. This project reflects Art Basel’s belief in collaboration as well our long-term commitment to strengthen and help develop infrastructures across Asia’s growing art scenes.”
When?
Thursday, November 4 – Sunday, November 7, 2021
Tickets
While entry to all galleries and many art spaces is free of charge, the admission fees to museums will be charged as usual. Art Week Tokyo will offer different passes that include bus rides and admissions to participating museums ranging from 1,000 yen (9 USD) to 2,800 yen (26 USD).
Passes will be available on Art Week Tokyo’s website at www.artweektokyo.com.