Towada Art Center

Little knownBarely documented in English. This is the kind of place the site exists for.

Researched and written by Hinato

Towada Art Centercontemporary artKusamasite-specificTowada

Photo: chinnian from Singapore / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0) · original

Towada Art Center is one of the less-obvious reasons to build a day around this part of Aomori.

Towada is a small city on the Aomori plain laid out on a grid by the Meiji government, and in 2008 it did something unusual with its main street: it commissioned a museum of separate white boxes, each holding a single permanently installed commissioned work, linked by glass corridors, so that the building reads as a small village of galleries rather than one block. Several of the works are outdoors or visible from the street, which means the museum leaks into the town.

The collection is site-specific and international — a Ron Mueck standing woman four metres tall, an Ana Laura Aláez, a Yayoi Kusama installation of spotted figures in the square opposite, a Choi Jeong Hwa flower horse on the corner. The Art Square across the road is free and always open. For a city of sixty thousand people this is a genuinely serious institution and it has quietly reorganised the whole main street around itself.

Visiting essentials

Cost

Permanent collection charged, special exhibitions priced separately | Outdoor Art Square free

Hours

9:00 AM – 5:00 PM | Last entry 4:30 PM | Outdoor Art Square open at all times

Closed: Closed Mondays, or the following day when the Monday is a national holiday | New Year

Best season

Year-round | Indoor museum with free outdoor works

How long to allow

90 minutes | 2.5 hours including the street works

Finding your way there

Getting there in detail

Towada. About a short walk from the Towada bus terminal, reached by bus from Shichinohe-Towada Station on the Tohoku Shinkansen. Closed Mondays, or the following day when the Monday is a national holiday, and over the New Year. Admission charged for the permanent collection with separate pricing for special exhibitions; the outdoor Art Square opposite is free.

Good to know

**The Art Square is free and open at all times.** Kusama's spotted figures and the other outdoor commissions are across the road, cost nothing and can be seen at night. If you arrive on a Monday, this is still available. **Every work is commissioned for its room.** This is not a collection hung in a building; each white box was built around a specific piece. Reading it that way changes how the sequence of rooms feels. **Walk the main street.** Works continue along Kanchogai-dori outside the museum, which the city planned deliberately. The museum is the anchor of a street, not a destination on its own. **Closed Mondays.** With a holiday-Monday shift to the Tuesday. Towada is not a city with a second museum to fall back on. **Getting there needs a bus.** Shichinohe-Towada on the Shinkansen is not in Towada city; a bus connects them. Factor that in from Tokyo.

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