Just to be clear, there are currently 2 Picasso exhibits showing in Tokyo. One in the Roppongi Midtown Suntory Museum of Art, entitled, "Picasso: Portrait of Soul". The second one, entitled, "Picasso: From the collection of the Musee National Picasso, Paris". Both run from October 4th to December 14th. We saw the second one at the National Art Centre (NAC).
The one at the NAC costs 1500 yen per person (adult). I believe that the the one at the Suntory Museum costs 1300 yen per adult. Just to for fun, the curators of the two Museums (I'm not sure if it's jointly managed), decided to have the two shows run parallel. Both galleries are in the Roppongi area and are about a 7-9 minute walk from the Hibiya line Roppongi station.
When we decided we were going to go see the Picasso exhibit on the national holiday honouring sports and fitness in Japan (no kidding, they have something akin to a phys. ed day here!), we hadn't realized that there were two separate and distinct exhibits on the great artists. We arrived at Roppongi station via the Hibiya metro line and started following signs to the Picasso exhibit. I was somewhat confused because I had read in the magazines that the exhibit (that we thought were going to see) was at the NAC. We had never been to the NAC before, but I had passed by signs pointing the way to the NAC several times. Upon seeing signs to get to "the Picasso exhibit at the Tokyo Midtown", I was slightly confused, but thought that there must have been some underground tunnel route that I was unaware of. Not an unreasonable assumption because Tokyo has far too many underground routes for me to track... However, these signs were actually pointing to the first of the exhibits that we ended up not having sufficient time to see that day.
Luckily for us, I decided that I knew best and decided to ignore the signs pointing us to the Tokyo Midtown's Picasso exhibit. We found the NAC with almost no incident. Almost because I nearly got run over by a taxi as the road turning left from the main street actually has no pedestrian sidewalk for the first bit. So if you're really unlucky, a taxi will round a corner far to fast to see you at first, and will only swerve at the last possible minute to heighten the impending drama.
Once there, the outside of the building is impressive. It's not a rectangular shaped building and it has a large garden out front which is uncharacteristic of most Japanese buildings. Access to the regular exhibits is actually free, so you might actually end up inside following the "free" signs, only to have to come outside again to buy tickets for the special exhibit. We saw it happen to a couple of people in front of us.
Once inside the building, their is an atrium-like atmosphere given off from the floor to ceiling windows. A number of snack places exist on the left (see photo above) and the galleries start on the first floor and continue upstairs. You have to pay attention carefully to the signs lest you walk into the wrong exhibit (i.e. one that isn't free and one that you haven't paid for). Or you can do what we did and blindly followed the crowd. Since it was a national holiday, there was actually a lot of people there to see the Picasso exhibit that day.
From the maps that they give you at the front (after they check your bags and pass a metal wand over all your clothes), it looked as if the exhibit was took up about 6 rooms, one of those was a large corner room. The ceilings were high, giving the effect of space. However, for most of the art (painting and sculptures), it seemed as if there was too many in too tight a space. Call me a Picasso art snob, but when I was in Spain at the Picasso museum there, there was an entire museum and several floors and a basement devoted to Picasso's works and his life. I think the souvenir shop was bigger than the exhibit in Tokyo. Anyways, while it was nice for the pieces from Paris to come to Tokyo for my viewing pleasure, it seemed to be a lot of Picasso for a couple hours, especially when the exhibit hall is so cramped.
We had originally planned to see the 2nd exhibit as well, but after the trials of the first exhibit, we decided to call it a day. We were excited to see one of the Bay at Cannes paintings up on the wall. We stopped there for a while and looked at the original. We have a print up on our wall at home. It's from the same series, but I don't believe it's the exact original as the original was hanging up in the Picasso museum in Spain. But it was nice to know that we owned a copy of art worthy of show.
After the NAC, we made a half-hearted attempt to get to the Midtown's exhibit. But when we smelled all the food from all the restaurants serving lunch, we decided to do lunch instead. Above is the scene after my vodka and grenadine showed up. As you can see, we succumbed to the omiyage store which was strategically positioned at the exit of the exhibit.
It was worth the 1500 yen but I would like to go again during the week when it there are less crowds and I can enjoy each painting/sculpture more. I imagine the exhibit is just as popular during the weekends.
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