Videos.

A special visit to the Hara Museum ARC

We visit the Hara Museum ARC with its director Aono Kazuko. Located in a verdant setting about two hours from Tokyo in Gunma Prefecture, the museum opened in 1988 and presents the pioneering collection of postwar and contemporary art assembled by Hara Toshio. For its singular building, Hara Toshio approached architect Isozaki Arata.

A Zen Garden in Kyoto with Yuri Ugaya

Born in Kyoto, Yuri Ugaya studied Japanese Cultural History at Doshisha University before obtaining a master’s degree from Awaji Landscape Planning and Horticulture Academy in Hyogo. She also studied horticulture and landscape design at the School of Niagara Horticulture in Canada and did an internship at the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew in the United Kingdom. Years of research and interviews with garden designers and owners across Japan have resulted in her publishing eight books on the subject. She designs gardens in Japan and abroad. Amongst them is the recent renovation of the garden at Houon-in temple, Kyoto, and a dried rock garden at New York City’s Grand Central Station in 2017.

Masamitsu Saito

 Masamitsu Saito has been researching and collecting bamboo art for 40 years. Sharing his time between Tokyo and Tochigi Prefecture, he has put together a collection of close to 1,000 works in bamboo, ranging from the Edo period (1603-1868) to today. His activities extend to advising on the mounting of art exhibitions in Japan and abroad, including ‘Lines and Shapes, Lines and Spaces: The Bamboo Work of Iizuka Rokansai and Tanabe Chikuunsai’ at Musée Tomo in Tokyo in 2018 and ‘Fendre l’Air, Art du bambou au Japon’ at musée du quai Branly in Paris in 2018-19. Some of the bamboo baskets he has owned are now in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

Collecting Japanese Ceramics

Tim Warner-Johnson is an art advisor specialised in Old Master Paintings. Over the last few years he has been building an interesting collection of Japanese ceramics, with limited budget and without going to Japan. His inspiring story shows what can be achieved with passion and focus.  He welcomed us in his home in London to discuss some of his favourite pieces.

Artist Hanako Miwa

Hanako Miwa lives and works in Hagi, Japan. She hails from an illustrious dynasty of potters that originated in the mid 17th century; the Miwa lineage counts thirteen generations and two Living National Treasures. Hanako-san is the first female ceramicist in her family. She has been exhibiting her work since 2001, creating tea wares and installations. The culture of tea is central to her art and she talked to us from her home, sitting by her exquisite portable tea house.

Art Advisor and Collector Ildegarda Scheidegger

Ildegarda Scheidegger is an art advisor and collector. Living in Zurich, she has maintained the deep bond with Japan she first developed when residing there in the 1980s. Today her Swiss home is the embodiment of her intimate connection with Japan: it is not only inhabited by a rich and diverse art collection, but it also has at its heart remarkable rooms strongly inspired by Japanese design that constitute a very special private shelter.

Museum Curator Masami Yamada

Masami Yamada is Curator in the Asia Department at the Victoria and Albert Museum with particular responsibility for Japanese lacquerware, netsuke and ukiyo-e woodblock prints. Before joining the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2018, she spent seven years in the Japanese Art Department at Bonhams Auctioneers where she handled Japanese decorative arts of a wide range of materials. Her current research area extends to Japanese contemporary crafts and design.

Welcoming us at the museum, where she takes us to the Toshiba Gallery of Japanese art, she discusses her role as a curator, the scope of the collection and also presents two groups of objects recently acquired by the V&A.