We can make another future : Japanese art after 1989

155 CHRONOLOGY | REUBEN KEEHAN 154 WE CAN MAKE ANOTHER FUTURE: JAPANESE ART AFTER 1989 8 JUNE ‘Documenta 11’ opens in Kassel; On Kawara returns, along with Ryuji Miyamoto. AUGUST The Matsumoto City Museum of Art is inaugurated with a retrospective of Yayoi Kusama, the city’s most famous artist; and the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art opens in Kobe. 12 SEPTEMBER Yayoi Kusama and Lee Ufan (along with Nam June Paik) make up the core group of senior avant-garde artists profiled in-depth in QAG’s ‘APT2002: Asia–Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’; major works by both artists are acquired for the Gallery’s Collection. SEPTEMBER Avant-garde pioneer Yasunao Tone wins the Golden Nica for Digital Music and Sound Art at the Prix Ars Electronica. 7 OCTOBER Takashi Murakami’s collaboration with Louis Vuitton launches in Paris. 12 OCTOBER The Contemporary Art Museum, Kumamoto (CAMK) opens its doors on the southern island of Kyushu. OCTOBER Avant-garde event space SuperDeluxe opens in a Roppongi building basement in Tokyo. 15 NOVEMBER Following the announcement that the Shokuryo Building in Tokyo will be demolished to make way for an apartment block, the resident galleries collaborate on the nine-day exhibition ‘Emotional Site’. NOVEMBER Non-profit art initiative remo (Record, Expression and Medium Organization) opens in Festival Gate, a largely defunct ‘bubble-era’ urban theme park in Osaka. 7 DECEMBER The multilateral exchange project ‘Under Construction: New Dimensions of Asian Art’ opens at Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery and the Japan Foundation Forum, including artists and works from across the region. 2003 2 MARCH ‘The History of Japanese Photography’ opens at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. 15 JUNE Yuko Hasegawa includes work by Yutaka Sone and Motohiko Odani in the Japanese Pavilion at the 50th Venice Biennale, while Tadasu Takamine participates in Hou Hanru’s Arsenale exhibition ‘Zones of Urgency’. SEPTEMBER Japan’s run of success in the Golden Nica for Digital Music and Sound Art continues with international recognition for onkyo (minimalist tonal improvisation) through shared honours awarded to Sachiko M, Ami Yoshida and Utah Kawasaki. 18 OCTOBER The much-anticipated Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, opens its doors to the public with the inaugural exhibition ‘Happiness: A Survival Guide for Art and Life’. Coinciding with the event, ARTiT , a bilingual quarterly art magazine published in English and Japanese and edited by Realtokyo founder Tetsuya Ozaki, launches its first issue. 18 OCTOBER Command N open their new space in Yushima in Tokyo. 2004 7 FEBRUARY Mori Art Museum launches its triennial exhibition of Japanese art, ‘Roppongi Crossing’, with a 60-artist survey organised by Mori curators Mami Kataoka and Takashi Azumaya, as well as Hisako Hara, Minoru Hatanaka, Takayo Iida and Nobuko Shumata. MARCH Yokohama non-profit BankART opens in a pair of former bank buildings in the city’s elegant Bashamichi area. 17 JULY Taro Amano’s group exhibition ‘Non‑Sect Radical: Contemporary Photography III’ at Yokohama Museum of Art opens without Tadasu Takamine’s video work Kimura-san , after the museum’s director, Koji Yukiyama, refers the work to police, who label it ‘highly harmful’; the work shows the artist masturbating a disabled man. 18 JULY Chichu Art Museum, with its striking design by Tadao Ando and its permanent collection consisting of works by Claude Monet, James Turrell and Walter de Maria, opens on Naoshima Island. 9 OCTOBER 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, opens in an award-winning building designed by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, with selections from its 248-piece strong collection of post‑1980 international art, in addition to 20 works commissioned by Chief Curator Yuko Hasegawa. 11 AUGUST Yoshitomo Nara’s solo show, ‘I Don’t Mind, if You Forget Me’ opens at Yokohama Museum of Art in time for the inaugural triennale. 2 SEPTEMBER The first Yokohama Triennale opens in the city’s bayside Minato Mirai area, and is Japan’s first global contemporary art exhibition of the biennale era. For the first instalment, senior figures Shinji Kohmoto, Nobuo Nakamura, Fumio Nanjo and Akira Tatehata curate the exhibition ‘MEGA WAVE: Towards a New Synthesis’, featuring 110 artists from around the world. 3 SEPTEMBER Sound artist and former Dumb Type member, Ryoji Ikeda is awarded the Golden Nica for Digital Music and Sound Art at the Prix Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria. 4 OCTOBER ‘Facts of Life: Contemporary Japanese Art’, curated by Jonathan Watkins and Mami Kataoka, opens at Hayward Gallery, London. 10 NOVEMBER ‘Neo Tokyo: Japanese Art Now’ opens at Sydney’s MCA. Curated by Rachel Kent, the exhibition focuses on artists who came to prominence in the second half of the 1990s. 2002 16 JANUARY The newly refurbished National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (MOMAT), reopens with the collection survey exhibition ‘The Unfinished Century: Legacies of 20th Century Art’. 5 MARCH Isetan Museum, the last remaining Shinjuku department store gallery, a hallmark of the 1980s, closes its doors, citing competition from the new public museums. 16 MARCH The first instalment of ‘Geisai’, a biannual fair for emerging artists organised by Takashi Murakami, is held in the Tokyo Tower Amusement Hall. 21 MARCH The 2nd Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale opens featuring 37 contemporary artists from across Asia; Japanese participants include Atelier Bow-Wow, Yoshihiro Suda, Hitoshi Ushijima and Yukinori Yanagi. 15 MAY Takashi Murakami’s sculpture Hiropon 1997, purchased for ¥3 million in 1997, fetches roughly 15 times its original price at auction in New York; the US$427 500 price is well above the original estimate of US$80 000–120 000. Critic Noi Sawaragi attributes the result to the extensive work that Murakami has expended contextualising his art for Western audiences. Yayoi Kusama (right) pictured with Suhanya Raffel, then Head of Asian Art, during a studio visit for ‘APT2002: Asia–Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art’ Installation view of Narcissus garden 1966/2002 by Yayoi Kusama at the APT2002 official opening, Watermall, QAG / Photograph: Ray Fulton Installation view of Relatum 2002 by Lee Ufan in the Sculpture Courtyard, QAG, in APT2002 / Photograph: Natasha Harth Lee Ufan installing Relatum 2002 for APT2002 / Photograph: Natasha Harth