Japanese Museum opens in Belgium

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Via The Art Newspaper (article not available online)

[SIZE="3"]Japanese Museum opens in Belgium

Curator's 17-year campaign results in permanent home for collection[/SIZE]

Belgium's state collection of 17th to 19th-century Japanese art has its own museum after a curator's 17-year campaign. The museum has opened in a refurbished space in a former stable in a turn-of-the-century oriental pavilion in the north of Brussels.
The new Japanese Art Museum is housed in a 1907 building originally intended for the carts and horses of diners at a restaurant in the Chinese Pavilion, built under King Leopold II as part of a group of oriental-style buildings near his royal residence in the suburb of Laeken. The complex was abandoned before completion.
"The little building was never used for anything," the curator of the Japanese collection at the federal Royal Museums of Art and History (RMAH) Chantal Kozyreff told The Art Newspaper. "In 1989 I had the idea of renovating it. But we haven't been able to open this building until now." Lying derelict since the 1980s, it was eventually renovated with state support at a cost of E1.6m ($1.9m), although the process took six years due to funding delays.
The new exhibition space will host the 12,000 object Japanese collection of the RMAH which has been on limited display. At 260 sq. m, the new space is equal to that previously available at the main museum, but a rotation system will allow more pieces to be seen.
The collection consists mainly of objects from the Edo period dating from the 17th to 19th centuries, including a notable collection of prints, plus suits of armour, lacquer and ceramic objects and kimonos.
Among the 7,500 prints - the pride of the collection - are works by the masters Harunobu, Utamaro, Skaraku, Hokusai and Hiroshige. They depict scenes including Kabuki and Noh theatre actors, courtesans and landscapes in a style highly influential on the development of modern European art.
The selection of textiles will be changed every three months, while the prints will be rotated monthly to protect their delicate colours from overexposure to light.
Ms Kozyreff said the collection was a combination of works bought by the state from the Paris collector Siegfried Bing in 1889, with other holdings bought from the Belgian collector Edmond Michotte in 1905 consisting mainly of prints, and various gifts received by the museum since World War II. The museum received 4,500 visitors in its first five days of opening, during which time entry was free.