Andrew Wyeth Exhibition from the Marunuma Art Park Collection

Staring at the ruined house

“Andrew Wyeth Exhibition from the Marunuma Art Park Collection” Viewing Report

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About Exhibition

Exhibition title: Andrew Wyeth from the Marunuma Art Park Collection – Olson House in Memory
Dates: First period: Saturday, September 14, 2024 – Sunday, October 27, 2024 / Second period: Tuesday, October 29, 2024 – Sunday, December 8, 2024
Opening hours: 10:00 am – 5:00 pm
Closed: Mondays (except September 16th and 23rd, October 14th, November 4th, November 18th, 25th, and December 2nd), and the Tuesday following a public holiday
Organizer: Asahi Group Oyamazaki Villa Museum of Art
Special cooperation: Marunuma Art Park
Admission fee
1,300 yen for adults (1,200 yen for groups)
500 yen for high school and university students (400 yen for groups)
Free for junior high school students and younger
300 yen for people with a disability certificate *Groups: 20 or more people *All prices include tax Sponsored by: Kyoto Prefecture, Oyamazaki Town, Oyamazaki Town Board of Education, Kyoto Shimbun, Yomiuri Shimbun Kyoto Bureau, Asahi Shimbun Kyoto Bureau, Mainichi Shimbun Kyoto Branch, Sankei Shimbun Kyoto Bureau, NHK Kyoto Broadcasting Station, FM Kyoto

Report

A review of “Andrew Wyeth from the Marunuma Art Park Collection – Remembering the Olson House,” held at the Oyamazaki Sanso Museum of Art on October 22, 2024.

＜Table of contents for review＞

The road to Oyamazaki Villa Museum of Art
“Marunuma Art Park Collection: Andrew Wyeth – Memories of the Olson House”
Cafe at the Oyamazaki Villa Museum of Art
Outdoors

＜The road to Oyamazaki Villa Museum of Art ＞

The Haruka Express train painted in a Hello Kitty design

To get to the museum, take the JR Tokaido-Sanyo Main Line from Kyoto Station, get off at Yamazaki Station, and walk to the museum. The museum offers a shuttle bus from the station, but it is a minibus, so the number of passengers is limited, and priority is given to people with disabilities. The number of buses is also limited, so it is probably better to walk if you have no problems walking. If you are visiting by car, there is no parking lot at the museum, so you will need to park in a paid parking lot around the station, just like when you come by train, and then walk or take a minibus from the station.

There are coffee shops around the station, so it seems possible to eat.

To get to the museum, you need to cross a large railroad crossing on the Tokaido-Sanyo Main Line, and then go up a hill from the station to the museum. There is a sign for the museum at the fork in the road, so you won’t get lost.

While I was waiting for the railroad crossing, the Hello Kitty version of the Haruka Express, which connects Kyoto and Kansai Airport, passed right in front of me.

Mount Tenno, where the Oyamazaki Sanso Museum is located, is the name of the place where the Battle of Yamazaki took place during the Sengoku period, when Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Akechi Mitsuhide fought. Near the waiting area for the shuttle bus, a ceramic panel work titled “Hideyoshi’s Road” by Sakaiya Taichi and illustrated by Iwai Hiroshi is on display.

The fence at the museum entrance is opened by a security guard at 10am, when the museum opens. It is about a five-minute walk uphill from this entrance to the museum. There is a ticket office and a shop at the entrance to the building. In addition to cash, cashless payments such as credit cards can be made for admission tickets and at the shop.

＜”Marunuma Art Park Collection: Andrew Wyeth – Memories of the Olson House”＞

Oyamazaki Villa Museum of Art, Main House

The exhibition is divided into three blocks, with works on display in three locations: the main building, the Yamate Building “Dream Box,” and the Underground Building “Underground Jewelry Box.”

Exhibition Room 1 in the main building is an introduction to Wyeth, and displays a model of the Olson House and other items. The main building is also a permanent exhibition room, and is displayed near a group of works related to the Mingei Movement supported by Yamamoto Tamesaburo, the first president of Japan Brewery Co., Ltd. (now Asahi Group Holdings, Ltd.).

From the main building, take the stairs or elevator to the second floor, where you will find the coffee shop and permanent exhibition room. The elevator is inconspicuous from the outside, successfully combining barrier-free access with the old building.

The Yamate Building “Dream Box,” which can be reached by passing through the corridor leading from the main building to the Yamate Building, is a gallery space where works related to the Olson House, the main theme of this exhibition, are on display.
The exhibition features simple but emotional works such as the Olson siblings’ everyday scenes and a study for “Ghost,” depicting a scene in which Wyeth was surprised by his reflection in the mirror.

Returning from the Yamatekan to the main building, the exhibition continues through an outdoor corridor to the underground museum, “Underground Jewelry Box.” In “Underground Jewelry Box,” a study for Wyeth’s masterpiece “Christina’s World” is exhibited opposite Claude Monet’s “Water Lilies” series.

It had been a while since I had seen Wyeth’s work, and it was a poetic world that was the polar opposite of the colorful works of Warhol and Keith Haring that come to mind when thinking of American painting, and it was a very good experience to be able to view it at the Oyamazaki Sanso Museum of Art.

After this, I went back home for business and saw my 50-year-old family home, and was filled with sentimentality, wondering if it would decay like the Olson House. However, upon investigation, I found that the Olson House is still standing as of 2024, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2011 and is managed and operated by the Farnsworth Art Museum. Olson Houses that are the property of nameless individuals all over Japan will likely become vacant lots, but buildings with stories to tell are passed down all over the world.

The works on display are from the collection of Marunuma Art Park, and I had no idea there was such a large collection in Japan. There is detailed information about Marunuma Art Park at the link, but it says that there are no permanent exhibits, and that the museum is used as a workshop and artist’s studio. I hope that the works will be on permanent display when they are not being loaned out to other museums.

Photography is permitted from outside the building, including on the balconies, but photography is prohibited anywhere inside the building.

＜Cafe at the Oyamazaki Villa Museum of Art＞

I entered the museum at 10:00, bought a ticket, and headed to the cafe on the second floor. It had been over a decade since I last came here. There were two types of cakes and several drinks. This time I had a Calpis and berry tart. You can’t take photos inside the cafe, but you can take photos of the cakes.

The cafe doesn’t seem to serve food, so if you’re going at a time when you might get hungry, it’s probably best to eat beforehand.

From the balcony of the cafe, you can see the corridor of the “Underground Jewelry Box,” Yawata City, and the top of the three-story pagoda of Hoshoji Temple. Beyond the “Underground Jewelry Box” is the Yodo River, but it was overgrown with trees and I couldn’t see it.

＜Outdoors＞

The leaves at the Oyamazaki Villa Museum turn red in early December, but on the day we visited in late October, most of the trees were still green, although some were slightly reddish. There are also several outdoor sculptures, and you can find some of them by walking around outside the museum after viewing the interior.