Taniguchi - nine museums [published on the occasion ot the exhibition "Yoshio Taniguchi: nine museums, November 20, 2004 - January 31, 2005, the exhibition travels to Japan 2005 to Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, Tokyo; the Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum

"This volume celebrates Japanese architect Yoshio Taniguchi by presenting nine of his museum designs, from the renovation and expansion of The Museum of Modern Art - Taniguchi's only museum to be built outside of Japan - to projects in Tokyo, Kyoto, and throughout his native country. Taniguchi's museums are central to understanding his approach to architecture. Distinctly modern, each design is marked by a rich materiality, a respect for pure geometry, and a commitment to the art of building." Yoshio Taniguchi: Nine Museums is the first critical assessment of the architect's achievements. The book unfolds chronologically, starting with his first independent museum, the 1978 Shiseido Museum of Art, and ends with his Centennial Hall, which will be part of the Kyoto National Museum upon its completion in 2007. An essay by Terence Riley, The Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design, The Museum of Modern Art, contextualizes the many threads that inform Taniguchi's work, including his early education at Harvard, his development as an architect during the movement toward a new urbanism in the 1960s, and the unfolding of a vocabulary of forms that is distinctly his own. The Museum of Modern Art is now in the midst of the largest building project in its history. Designed by Yoshio Taniguchi, the new Museum will reopen in midtown Manhattan in winter 2004-05 to coincide with its 75th anniversary. The 630,000-square-foot Museum will be nearly twice the size of the former facility, offering dramatically expanded and redesigned spaces for exhibitions, public programming, educational outreach, and scholarly research. But The Museum of Modern Art is not Taniguchi's first museum, though it is his first museum in the United States. The architect has been designing museums in his native Japan since 1978. In celebration of the opening of the new MoMA building, the Museum is publishing this book about Taniguchi's museums--nine in all. They include the Tokyo National Museum, Marugami Museum of Contemporary Art, Nagano Art Museum, Ken Domon Museum of Photography, and Shiseido Art Museum. For the Higashiyama Kaii Gallery in Nagano, Taniguchi situated a display space for the works of painter Kaii Higashiyama next to a reflecting pool and garden. In the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, built on the old castle site of Komoro City, Taniguchi expressed the history and distinct nature of the place by affording views to both the new city and the historic area. Finally, the Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art, situated across from the city's railway station, was designed to include a plaza that connects the museum with the station. Nine Museums will discuss the plans of each of these museums with an emphasis on The Museum of Modern Art's new building. Nine museums by Yoshio Taniguchi / Terence Riley Shiseido Art Museum Ken Domon Museum of Photography Nagano Prefectural Shinano Art Museum, Higashiyama Kaii Gallery Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art Toyota Municipal Museum of Art Tokyo National Museum, The Gallery of Hō̄ryūji Treasures The Museum of Modern Art Higashiyama Kaii Museum Kyoto National Museum, Centennial Hall. Catalog of the exhibit, with an overview essay by Terence Riley. Includes text by multiple authors but largely consist of illustrations