A Flair For Curating

The director of Tokyo’s Mori Art Museum, FUMIO NANJO, describes to andrew dembina what he thinks it takes to run a major world-class public gallery space in the 21st century.

- Fumio Nanjo

FUMIO NANJO HAS led the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo as its director since 2006, three years after it launched in the glamorous and then-brand-new neighbourhood of Roppongi Hills.

A force in the contemporary-art world, this spring he was curatorial director of the inaugural Honolulu Biennial. Nanjo’s CV also includes roles at both Venice and Taipei biennales in the late 1990s and membership of the Turner Prize jury committee in 1998, and he curated the 3rd Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in 1999, in Brisbane, Australia. Since being at the Mori – which shows exhibitions rather than amassing permanent collections – Nanjo’s mission has been to present one third of work from Japan, one third from Asia, and the remainder from other areas of the world, sometimes as solo shows, sometimes as a group and other times as thematic exhibitions.

Earlier this year, Nanjo took the museum’s reach beyond its walls when he oversaw the Mori’s installation of a selection of works in the most talked about new high-end mall in Tokyo: Ginza Six. These included 14 striking red-and-white Kusama pumpkins hung from the main atrium ceiling.

HOW DO YOU CREATE AND MAINTAIN PUBLIC INTEREST IN A WORLD-CLASS GALLERY IN THE 21ST CENTURY?

There are several levels of how to engage with the public. Of course the programme is the most important thing. We are trying to have wider, more eclectic types of exhibitions.