Art comes in many forms.
There are a couple large art museums in Oita, Japan - the Oita (City) Art Museum and the Oita Prefectural Art Museum. The Oita Prefectural Art Museum is a modern art museum and contemporary exhibition space whilst the Oita (City) Art Museum contains a larger permanent collection and more diverse array of art pieces. For this reason I set out to see the Oita City Art Museum which had on permanent display several paintings by a few 19th Century painters from the pointillism and impressionism era.
After checking into my hotel I asked for directions to the art museum. It took maybe about 30 minutes to walk there? Not sure because I broke up my walk halfway through with a fatty sashimi lunch.
I was ready to order another plate at 2:20pm when the hostess informed me via a Star Trek translator device that the last call was actually at 2pm and they closed at 2:30pm. I was so consumed by my food I had not realized I was the last person in the restaurant. Suddenly I felt very lonely and overbearing - I realized they wanted to get out of there too! I finished up my food and when I finally reached I recognized it was not the one I was intending to go to.
The hotel staff had directed me towards the Oita Prefectural Art Museum (OPAM) which unfortunately was not the museum I had wanted to go to. The Oita Prefectural Art Museum (OPAM) is a building with the 2000s vibes, a contemporary architectural style with its simple big box form extruded up like a square four levels, brick and glass facade, and large open air atrium. The building was nice, however, and reminded me of Pepper Canyon Hall at UC San Diego.
Nostalgic in a sense and so I wandered around the halls of OPAM soaking up the atmosphere. Admission into OPAM is free and you pay a la carte style to see each exhibition. There are 3 levels all with temporary exhibits - one was brush calligraphy, another was traditional Japanese paintings by current Japanese artists, and another was bamboo basket weaves also by current artists. After paying to see the first exhibit of basket weavings I left and quickly went to the bus stop across the street to try and hightail it to the Oita Art Museum before it closed, located all the way on the other side of town. I was a bit tired of Asian art and really wanted to get some European art on!
I arrived at the Oita Art Museum 90 minutes before closing. Ninety minutes is not the amount of time I prefer to spend at a museum but that’s all I had.
Oh would you look at that! What a coincidence, their partner city is Austin.
While they had a really good permanent collection, I really loved and was quite surprised by their temporary exhibition featuring works from the likes of Banksy and others. In particular I really loved this rendition of Disney’s Ariel.
You can read the interpretation of this below:
And my own interpretation of the art - Beyond all that glimmers and shines is a real person… tucked way behind.
P.Sunset at the OITA ART MUSEUM. That’s it for today!
