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Past Special Exhibition 2021

Time to Spend in an Art Museum 2021

  • Shiseido Collection Exhibition
    Part 1: Vintage Perfume Bottles and Japanese paintings
    May 11 (Tue) — July 23 (Fri), 2021 End of session
  • Shiseido Collection Exhibition
    Part 2: Contemporary ceramic art, Metalwork and Oil paintings
    August 3 (Tue) — October 29 (Fri), 2021

Beginning in 2020, the Shiseido Collection exhibition series entitled Time to Spend in an Art Museum gave visitors the chance to enjoy a moment of luxury surrounded by art in an intimate and familiar setting.

In 2021, our summer exhibition season was divided into two halves. In the first we exhibited a special selection of vintage perfume bottles and Japanese paintings, while in the second half we featured examples of modern ceramic art, metalwork and oil paintings.

The paintings put on display were mainly pieces that had previously been shown in the Shiseido-sponsored Third Tsubaki-Kai Exhibition (or Third Shiseido Camellia Association Exhibition) (1974 – 1990). Displaying the sort of graceful and dignified representational paintings most favored by Shiseido, the Japanese-style paintings selected for the exhibit were mostly the work of OKUMURA Togyū and TAKAYAMA Tatsuo, while the oil paintings were mostly created by USHIJIMA Noriyuki and WAKITA Kazu.

As for the perfume bottles, various significant showpieces that had won renown throughout the history of perfume bottle design were placed on display, with the main focus of the exhibition centered around works of the 1920s, a period often referred to as the golden age of perfume. Modern craft works consisted of ceramic art by KAMODA Shōji and YAGI Kazuo, as well as metalwork by NISHI Daiyū, YOSHIHA Yohey III and NAITŌ Shirō (who is now recognized as an Important Intangible Cultural Property and Living National Treasure in the category of metal carving).

Second ‘Craft for All of Us Ⅱ’ Exhibition
— Shiseido Proposals for More Beautiful Lives —

January 19(Tue) — April 23(Fri), 2021

Beginning in 2015, Shiseido Art House’s Craft for All of Us exhibitions have been a series of special exhibitions held regularly at the Shiseido Art House in Kakegawa, Shizuoka. One of Shiseido’s main corporate missions has been to promote the company’s ongoing commitment to ”creating beautiful living culture,” and plans were made to hold the Craft for All of Us exhibitions with the aim to carry out this mission in the form of its exhibitions. Another primary goal of this series of Craft for All of Us exhibitions has been to return hand-crafted artisanal items—which have increasingly come to be regarded as “works of art” and therefore grown more distant from people’s everyday lives—to the realm of everyday use.

The Craft for All of Us II exhibitions represented the second phase of the Craft for All of Us exhibitions, and were begun in 2019, constituting a continuation of all the concepts of the first-phase Craft for All of Us exhibitions.

In the Craft for All of Us II exhibitions, ceramic artist Imaizumi Imaemon XIV, who was one of the founding members of the first phase of exhibitions, has remained at center stage, and the following four artists were added anew: lacquer artists Nakajō Iori and Mizuguchi Saki, metalworker Yoshiha Yohey III, and glassworker Adachi Masao. Arranged in combination with a variety of other craftworks and implements borrowed from the Shiseido Art House collection, new creations by these five artists were put on display to replicate annual cultural activities, room decors or the seasons, as living examples of appealing ways in which hand-crafted objects can be used and enjoyed in everyday life.

Under current conditions, during which the effects of the novel coronavirus have continued to spread, the time we’ve been spending at home has continued to grow, causing us to focus our attention and interests much more closely on the everyday items we use than ever before.

Craftworks with high artistic quality add color to our everyday lives, and the time we spend enjoying them gives us quiet and profound pleasure. We believe that the Craft for All of Us II exhibitions have created opportunities to enable a review of Japan’s traditional cultural activities, customs or blessing of the seasons, which we have so frequently tended to forget in our bustling daily lives.