Toyama Glass Art Museum

The Toyama City Museum of Glass Art is a public art museum that exhibits contemporary glass art works by glass artists from Japan and abroad, as well as historical glass artifacts, with a focus on Toyama glass.

The Toyama City Museum of Glass Art is located on the 2nd to 6th floors of the Toyama Kirari complex, which consists of a gallery, library, bank, and other facilities.

On the sixth floor is the “Glass Art Garden,” where five installation works by world-renowned contemporary glass American glass artist Dale Chihuly are on permanent display. Toyama City commissioned Chihuly Studio to create these works, and three of them were created by Chihuly himself and his staff during their visit to Japan.

There is also a museum store on the second floor next to the café. The second and third floors are for special exhibitions, while the fourth and sixth floors are for permanent exhibits.

The special exhibition focuses on contemporary glass art works from the 1950s onward.

Outside the exhibition rooms, there is a “Glass Art Passage” featuring works by glass artisans associated with Toyama Prefecture.

The museum also has a Japanese-style café, which is popular as a place to relax in a calm atmosphere. A variety of menus using fu are offered.

TOYAMA Kirari

TOYAMA KIRARI” is a complex facility with one basement floor and 10 floors above ground designed by Kengo Kuma, one of Japan’s leading architects.

On the north and east facades of the exterior walls, approximately 1,000 slender panels of three different types are lined up to represent the Tateyama mountain range. The panels, made of aluminum, glass, and white granite, are arranged vertically at random angles, and the reflection of light changes with the time of day and weather conditions.

The interior is characterized by the diagonal opening of the atrium space from the second to the sixth floor. Upright cedar louvers at various angles surround the atrium, evoking the grandeur of the Tateyama mountain range.

The atrium is opened through a skylight on the sixth floor, allowing light to penetrate the atrium at an angle. The interior is accented with glass and Japanese paper produced in Toyama Prefecture.

Exhibits

Permanent exhibitions include “Collection Exhibition,” “Glass Art Passage,” and “Glass Art Garden.

In the Collection Exhibition, works by contemporary glass artists such as Kyohei Fujita, Howard Ben Tre, and Yoko Togashi from the collection of Toyama City are on display in Gallery 4 on the 4th floor. The exhibition changes regularly.

Glass Art Passage” displays about 50 works by artists associated with Toyama on the walls of the second to fourth floors of the Toyama Kirari Museum. Admission is free.

On the 6th floor is the Glass Art Garden (Chihuly Experience), the symbol of the Museum of Glass Art. On permanent display are installation works by American contemporary glass artist Dale Chihuly’s studio, Chihuly Studio, which Toyama City commissioned him to create and he and his staff came to Japan to produce. Photography is permitted here for non-commercial purposes.

The museum’s collection includes Dale Chihuly’s “Toyama Millefiori” and “Toyama Floating Boat. Also on display are works by Kyohei Fujita, “Large Basin” by Howard Ben Tre, “Yellow Crown II” by Harvey K. Littleton, “Gorge <#11>” by Milan Handl, and “Minori (#7)” by Yoko Togashi. Other works include “Specialist” by Thomas Hlavicka.

Glass City Toyama

Toyama City is known as “Toyama, the City of Glass,” and is world-renowned for its many facilities related to glass art.

In the Edo period (1603-1867), Masatoshi Maeda, the second lord of the Toyama Domain, promoted pharmaceuticals, creating a special business model in which medicines were manufactured and sold in bulk and placed at the homes of customers, and the industry developed around it.

The region is known for “Toyama’s medicine peddlers” and has a long history of pharmaceutical industry, famous for its drug sales. As part of this industry, glass bottles for medicines were manufactured during the Meiji and Taisho periods, and many glass bottle factories were in operation.

However, as the glass industry declined, Toyama City sought to revive it.

In 1985, Toyama City began building a city of glass, and in 1991 established the Toyama Institute of Glass Art, and in 1994 opened the Toyama Glass Studio. In 2015, the “Toyama City Museum of Glass Art” was opened as the culmination of the city’s glass town development efforts.

The Toyama City Glass Art Museum was established as the culmination of the “City of Glass Toyama. Toyama City is a region known for “Toyama’s medicine peddlers” and is a town where the manufacture of medicines thrives. Glass bottles were also manufactured in Toyama City.