The Hakone Open-Air Museum, Kanagawa

The “Hakone Open-Air Museum” is the first open-air art museum in Japan, opened in 1963 in Ninodaira, Hakone. In the facility designed to make use of the rich nature of Hakone, about 120 works of masterpieces representing modern and contemporary sculptors are on permanent display. The “Hakone Open-Air Museum” lets you experience art in the wilderness.
The permanent exhibition site of the “Hakone Open-Air Museum” is a 70,000 square meter garden. Many sculptures with height and weight that can not be exhibited indoors are also exhibited. You can get close to some of the sculptures, so feel the artist’s sensibility and traces of production with your skin.
The Hakone Open-Air Museum is also full of art objects that you can touch and climb, such as play spots and play culture. In particular, because there are many works that children can enjoy, they also create opportunities for children to get in touch with works of art. There are also many avant-garde works, so on the Internet, there are also impressions that “I feel lost in a different world” and “children have an interest in art”. Because it is outdoors, you can talk freely. You can also take a walk while talking about your thoughts.
The Hakone Open-Air Museum has 2 restaurants and a café. The buffet style restaurant offers all-you-can-eat seasonal menus from Western to Japanese. It is popular with people of all ages. The other restaurant offers curry and pasta as well as course dishes. The cafe also sells snacks and drinks, as well as sweets, so it’s a great souvenir.
In addition to original goods, the shopping mall also handles Hakone’s specialty products. Masking gallery of long-established maker “Kamoi processed paper” of masking tape is opened in section of shopping mall. Please come and see for yourself. It is also a great place to commemorate your journey and choose souvenirs.

Taking advantage of the Nature

The “Chokoku no Mori Bijutsukan” (The Museum of sculptor’s forest) in Hakone where the tourist resort representing Kanto is the first field art museum “open air museum” in domestic opened in 1969 taking advantage of the Nature. It is a rich green garden which can overlook the mountains in Hakone, and plottage is 70,000 square meters. The scene which can enjoy grand nature every season fully also serves as a preeminent sightseeing spot. Permanent exhibition of about 120 masterpieces of the engraver representing modernization and the present age is displayed.

Feeling of opening and dynamic

It is an art museum of the form of the “Sculpture Garden” which has arranged sculpture on the lawn. A site with a feeling of opening and dynamic sculpture are the art space which both adults and children can enjoy thoroughly.

Circular open space is also field of sculpture

When you pass through the tunnel from the entrance and comes out to the outdoors, there is a circular open space which can overlook the mountains in Hakone there. This circular open space also has much field sculpture. The art work, “the crossing space structure” (1978) of Ryosaku Goto, which the group of 72 bodies each and a total of 144 bodies lengthens the limbs, a black male image and a red female image connect hand and foot of each other, and stands in a row.

The visionary beautiful world

The symphony sculpture which calls happiness is a big tower where the “Hakone Open-Air Museum” in woods is also conspicuous, and, in fact, this is also an art work. It is a tower which is 18 meters in height and 8 meters in inside diameter which can go into an inside. Among those the stained glass made from the fragment which set thick glass to hand split by hammer was inserted in the whole surface, the view has created the visionary beautiful world in response to the light from outside. When you finish climbing the spiral staircase which exists at the center of a tower, the whole Hakone Open Air Museum and the mountains in Hakone can be overlooked.

Can enjoy in a wide age group

Unlike a general art museum, the Hakone Open Air Museum is an art museum to see and turn around while walking and experiencing. From the family to traveling alone, it can be enjoyed in a wide age group.

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