Ai Tomiki

The “Galleries Without Artworks” exhibition at the Setagaya Art Museum far exceeded my expectations.

Walking into the galleries, you are welcomed by large glass windows framing the trees outside. You feel a serenity and a sense of possibility in the white, but not blank, walls. You look up at the ceiling and realize the vastness of the space.

You read the words of Shozo Uchii, who designed the building in 1985, displayed on inconspicuous white panels here and there. And then you notice the thoughtful architectural details designed by him, including the exterior walls that you can glimpse from the windows. (More about the beauty of his work in a future post.)

In a sense it was similar to the anticipation we feel when choosing a new plate to take home, or looking at photos of an empty apartment. The emptiness of the object triggers a reaction from all our hopes and dreams (which are always a reflection of our past experiences).

But an empty museum has something more. It’s a sense of anticipation towards encounters with the unexpected.

As Marshall McLuhan says, we’re often blinded by the content (the artwork) and overlook the role of the medium. Stripping away the content in this way turns out to be a powerful means to understand why we like certain things or act in certain ways.

If museums are a medium, or an “extension of our bodies” as McLuhan explains, we could view museums as an extension of our senses. They provide a safe place for us to experience the world while living in it.

A few years ago I met a curator who works for the Chigasaki City Museum of Art (a lovely gem tucked away among pine trees, in the seaside city of Chigasaki in Kanagawa). She spoke of museums in a similar way: “It could be that, at a museum, we see familiar things. We hear familiar voices. We feel familiar sensations. And we think familiar thoughts. All for the first time.”

I am surprised at how the empty galleries revealed so many things, and I admire the museum’s creativity in responding to these uncertain times.