IZU PHOTO MUSEUM

Clematis no Oka is located in the foothills of Mt. Fuji and overlooks the mountains of the Izu Peninsula. The museum is a comprehensive cultural complex that is comprised of Bernard Buffet Museum, Vangi Sculpture Garden Museum, and Literature Museum for Yasushi Inoue. The museum grounds includes gardens and restaurants. In October 2009 IZU PHOTO MUSEUM opened as a new addition to the complex. Contemporary artist Hiroshi Sugimoto designed the new addition’s interior and gardens.

The new museum will focus on curating exhibitions that delve into the research of historical and social conditions surrounding photography and film, two media that have evolved continually and with great speed since the late nineteenth century. Through our exhibitions, we hope to enrich everyday life through understanding human life and the world of artistic expression.

For several days, I wandered about the mountain quarries, and finally selected several dozen two-ton stones along with ten tons of flat stones—because at the time I was thinking to stack a natural rock wall—though when I lined up the large stones, that image gradually transformed into a stone chamber barely wide enough for a person to lie stretched out. The floor, walls and ceiling would all support each other, stone on stone, with virtually no human intervention, as if a kofun burial site had simply materialized there on its own. Did I come up with this plan for the museum grounds or did the rocks plant the idea in my head? I couldn’t tell. I began to wonder, when did people first come to inhabit this place on the plains below Mt. Fuji? I soon found out there was indeed a prehistoric Jomon site in the vicinity, not to mention many tumuli from the third- to sixth-century Kofun Period. Most of these, it was recorded, had been broken open in the course of clearing farm land, though one tumulus, the Harabun Kofun, had been preserved in the precincts of a shrine. Very likely, the populace had revered the tumulus as a place of divine visitation and eventually erected a Shinto shrine on the spot. I went to see this tumulus not a few kilometers from the museum and was awed to mysteriously find the model for my would-be “contemporary art” already there right at the last minute.

—Hiroshi Sugimoto
xcerpt from “Sakuteiki: Laying the Garden of Time,” appearing in HIROSHI SUGIMOTO: NATURE OF LIGHT (Izu Photo Museum/Nohara, 2009).

General Information
The museum grounds include a one-story building with three exhibition galleries, a museum shop, and two courtyards. Total floor area is 499 square meters with an exhibition area of 328 square meters. Construction began in October 2008 and was completed in October 2009. The building was designed by New Material Research Laboratory (Hiroshi Sugimoto + Tomoyuki Sakakida).

Address
347-1 Higashino Clematis no Oka, Nagaizumi-cho,Shizuoka 411-0931 Japan