September 28, 2002 - April 27, 2003
"The exhibition highlights the work of a distinguished architect who seamlessly weaves together architecture with dramatic natural environment."
Michael Conforti
Director Clark Art Institute
Tadao Ando: Architect, an exhibition designed by Tadao Ando, features 15 buildings and projects through models, drawings, photographs and videos.
The exhibition originated at the Saint Louis Art Museum.
Photo courtesy Clark Art Institute
Church on the Water
Projects featured include private residences designed in the 1970s and Ando's Japanese churches of the 1980s, such as the Church of the Light in Osaka and the Church on the Water in Hokkaido. The church on the Water overlooks a shallow artificial lake which has been created by the diversion of a nearby stream.
Among the highlights is the Naoshima Contemporary Art Museum (1992), a complex of galleries and guest hotels on a scenic bluff overlooking Japan's Inland Sea that demonstrates Ando's approach to connecting buildings with the earth by recessing them underground.
Photo courtesy Clark Art Institute
The pool at Naoshima.
Ando's recent commissions for museums in the United States and abroad, include the newly opened Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts in St. Louis, designs for the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, scheduled to open later this year, the future Calder Museum in Philadelphia, and the much-heralded commission for the Pinault Contemporary Art Foundation in Paris will also be on view.
Photo courtesy the Modern Art Museum Fort Worth
Modern Art Museum Fort Worth
The selected projects demonstrate Ando's ability to create interplay between interior and exterior spaces through his use of natural lighting and the creation of dramatic vistas.
The Clark will offer a number of special public programs related to the exhibition:
Friday, September 27
7:30 p.m.: Kenneth Frampton, Ware Professor of Architecture at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at Columbia University will give the lecture "The Topographic Architecture of Tadao Ando."
Sunday, October 13
3:00 p.m.: Paul Goldberger, architecture critic for The New Yorker, will speak on the topic "Architecture, Museums, and Authenticity."
Sunday, November 16
4:00 p.m.: Suzanne Stephens, special correspondent to Architectural Record, will moderate the Clark Conversation "Expanding Museums in the 21st Century."
Tadao Ando was recently selected to design a new building and addition for the Clark Art Institute. While Ando's other American commissions are contemporary art museums in large urban settings, the Clark building is Ando's first U.S. museum project in a dramatic natural setting.
"We chose Ando as architect because his work best complements the Clark's 140-acre setting as well as the contemplative and serene experience of art and the fertile environment for research and scholarship that distinguish the Clark."
Michael Conforti
Director Clark Art Institute
Groundbreaking for the Clark's facility is scheduled for late 2003.
Collaborating with Ando on the campus enhancement will be Watertown, Massachusetts-based landscape architects Reed Hilderbrand Associates. Reed Hilderbrand has worked on a number of projects in western New England, and their work in the Berkshires has consistently emphasized the area's rural character, including the types of ponds, trails, meadows, and scenic vistas found on the grounds of the Clark.
Photo courtesy Clark Art Institute
A self-trained architect, Ando was born in Osaka, Japan, in 1941. He studied traditional Japanese architecture and traveled to the United States, Europe, and Africa studying Western architecture and techniques, and founded Tadao Ando Architect & Associates in Osaka in 1969. Combining modern Western architecture and the simple geometric forms of traditional Japanese architecture, Ando has designed museums, religious structures, and residential and commercial buildings in Germany, Spain, Italy, and France as well as his native Japan. Ando is the recipient of the 1995 Pritzker Architecture Prize and the 2002 American Institute of Architects Gold Medal, and this June was named recipient of the Kyoto Prize for lifetime achievement in the arts and philosophy.
