I don't mind if it says 'Louis Vuitton'. The birth of the high-end Artizon Museum.

It was a few years ago that the Bridgestone Museum of Art reopened as the Artizon Museum after several years of renovations. As is often the case in such situations, there are times when people say, 'It was better before,' aren't there?

A particularly fresh memory is the relocation of the Sompo Museum, which was inside the Sompo Japan headquarters building, to a site next to the headquarters. The headquarters building was 43 stories high, had a superb view, and felt as comfortable as being in another world, but the new museum, including its location, felt awkward, like a prefab hut standing alone next to the main building. It was by no means cheap-looking, but next to that massive headquarters building, it inevitably looked very small and like an afterthought, which I thought was a great shame.

In contrast, the Artizon Museum had outstanding taste in everything from the building itself to the way the exhibits were displayed and the furnishings. It was so good that I think it might be the best museum in Tokyo right now, and it surprised me more than I had imagined.

Every time I go to Ginza, it's filled with an atmosphere that says, 'If you don't have money, go home.'

I sometimes worry that even if I have enough money for the train fare, the ticket gate won't open if I don't have enough 'style points'.

I imagine being told things like that, and every time I worry about whether the gate will open properly. If it gets really bad, I'm terrified they might tell me, 'Please change into a full coordinated outfit.'
Of course, all the station staff are wearing uniforms that look like they came straight off a Paris runway.

That is the image I have of Ginza. I think about it every time I go.

And in this Ginza, where stylish high-end places gather, an even more stylish museum was built. That is the Artizon Museum.
The style inflation rate is off the charts.

Recently, I feel that stations and towns mediated by large developers are becoming increasingly similar and losing their individuality.
They are by no means bad, but they aren't particularly good either; if I had to say, everyone is uniformly stylish but unremarkable.
I had the impression that places were becoming homogenized into an 'all 3.5' rating, losing the unique character of a town where something might be flawed but something else is a 5. However, the Artizon Museum felt like an 'all 5'.

The entrance and the doorway are also incredibly cool.

The chair at the entrance to the venue was so stylish that I couldn't tell if it was a chair or an object, and since I couldn't afford to pay for it if I sat on it and broke it, I just took a picture.
No one was sitting on it, but I thought everyone probably felt the same way.

The restrooms are also super stylish.

Even before I had reached the museum's exhibition rooms, it was the first time I had been so satisfied just by the entrance and the reception area. Honestly, it was such a wonderful experience that I could have just seen this, had tea in the cafe, and gone home without any issues.

The exhibition held on this day was for photographers Risaku Suzuki and Toshio Shibata.

When you go to a museum, special exhibitions are usually the main event, and the permanent collection is often treated as something to 'see if you have time,' but the amazing thing about this museum is that you can view both the special and permanent exhibitions with the exact same level of intensity.

The flow from the special exhibition to the permanent exhibition was particularly well-designed, and it was carefully calculated how to keep the feeling you had when you finished the special exhibition from breaking and smoothly connect it to the permanent one.

What I thought was particularly amazing was that the lighting intensity, wall colors, and floor colors changed completely between the special exhibition room and the permanent exhibition room, giving it a freshness as if you were entering a different world with a completely new mindset.

The special exhibition room had its lighting dimmed significantly, creating a dimly lit atmosphere where the photographs seemed to emerge from the darkness. This made it very easy to view, perhaps to highlight quiet photographs like those by Risaku Suzuki. In contrast, the permanent exhibition was quite bright overall, with white walls that created a strong sense of contrast.

This room, which houses sculptures and other works, has an atrium ceiling, allowing you to look down from the fifth floor to the floor below.

The transition from the dimly lit special exhibition, slowly descending the escalator into the light-filled permanent exhibition, is very well-calculated and moving. Furthermore, I have seen works chosen by artists to be displayed alongside their own in special exhibitions many times before, but the Manet self-portrait and others took on the appearance of spatial art and were truly wonderful.

All four sides of the building are glass-walled, offering a panoramic view of the Ginza cityscape.

From the first floor to the museum shop, there is an atrium ceiling, and looking down, I could see people eating on gold plates at the cafe on the first floor.

Sculptures like this are often just placed prominently in a museum gallery, but the way this one was set up with the skyscrapers in the background was just incredibly cool.

There was also an authentic Rodin.

The one that isn't gold (lol).

By the way, the way the sculptures are displayed at the Nishiyama Museum mentioned above is also excellent in a different way from the Artizon Museum.

It was a flawless museum that you could enjoy every inch of, and from every angle inside, everything looked cool—it was like, 'Are you Yujiro Ishihara?'

After getting off the escalator, it was such a wonderful, futuristic experience that I had the illusion that a Century with diplomatic plates might drive me home.

Moving on to the special exhibition!