25、ART MUSEUM and ZOO

 

Yasuko ICHIKAWA

Nogata Tanio Museum

 

Our Nogata Tanio Museum focuses importance on locality, and we mainly hold exhibitions by artists and local industries from Nogata city. Since 2004, the children in Fukuoka have been gathering in our museum to participate as staff members to plan exhibitions. Apart from planning events within the museum, they have also been taking part in supporting various activities in their hometowns. These include designing and making flags and decorations for the Star Festival on market streets, delivering messages of congratulations and making curtains to decorate the stage for coming-of-age ceremonies. The connection between our museum and Nogata is of great importance, hence we work to provide people with a place where they can become familiar with various art forms at a young age. This summer, we built a make-believe zoo inside the museum. There are no zoos in Nogata, but there is a museum. Therefore, instead of a real zoo, the artists, who have gathered from all over Fukuoka, created pieces which represent their own ideas of a “zoo” within the museum, together creating “Nogata Safari Land”. We would now like to announce the results we have obtained from this exhibition.