Hyogo Art Museum
September 11, 2009
I had a rare Friday off so I made my way to see the Visual Deception exhibit. I had never been to the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art before and it turned out to be a bit of a trip from my place. I’m glad I went because the museum is really cool and reminds me of the Dream Stage on Awaji Island.
The Visual Deception exhibit was fairly interesting. Most of the pieces were paintings made to resemble things in real life. I think what impressed me the most were the paintings made to look like something fastened to wood. The wood was painted very realistically. The Arcimboldo painting of the man made from vegetables was the center piece and probably the most deceptive of all. There were several pieces of art that can be viewed from different angles and you see different images at each angle.
There was a new permanent exhibit called Shadows. It was rather strange. First, it was the only exhibit where you can touch the art pieces. Some very friendly staff greeted you at the entrance and explained that you need to take off rings and watches, check your bags, and even wipe your hands clean before entering. Basically the room had several statues painted black with an LED light hanging above. This created some very interesting visual effects. I didn’t really touch anything.
One nice feature at the museum is the E-mail corner. The “E” in E-mail stood for the Japanese kanji for paintings. I’d write the kanji but WordPress has a tendency to screw it up later anyway. But anyway, you can email someone from some laptops set up with MS Outlook and attach different jpegs of paintings found in the museum. You may have guessed that these pictures I’ve slapped on this entry are the ones I emailed myself.
I spent about two hours in the musem going through each exhibit carefully. The area around the museum was worth walking around too. It’s close to a disaster research center that looked interesting. There are a couple of big giant shopping areas: a Sports Authority, Yamada Denki, a movie theater, and similar fare.
The Visual Deception exhibit runs until November 3rd. To get there, take the Special Rapid express train from Osaka station to Ashiya. Get off and take the local train to Nada (five stops away). Admission to the Visual Deception exhibit was 1300 yen, there’s a discount at the museum right now for the regular collections. I paid 1450 for everything to get in.
