The Yokohama Museum of Art is not one of Kenzo Tange’s best designs. Compared to the striking curves of the architect’s Yoyogi National Gymnasium or the lightness of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, the YMA is squat and charmless.
In 2017, for the Sixth Yokohama Triennale, contemporary Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei decorated the museum’s drab exterior with fluorescent inflatable rafts and life jackets, referencing the humanitarian crisis of refugees drowning in the Mediterranean Sea. For the 2020 edition, the entire facade was hidden by a gigantic shimmering gray membrane created by Croatian-born Ivana Franke.
After three years of renovation, the museum reopened in March this year with the eighth Yokohama Triennial, themed ‘Wild Grass: Our Lives’, and hanging from the building is… nothing at all.
