Hachinohe Art Museum

The Museum as an Art Farm: Sowing the seeds to cultivate community, foster creativity, and create a vision for Hachinohe in the 22nd century

The Hachinohe Art Museum has been re-envisioned as an “art farm” that fosters creativity through art experiences, where personal growth leads to community development.Unlike conventional art museums, which focus on exhibiting artworks as objects, this museum aims to create a new culture and revitalize Hachinohe City by providing a large space for people to engage in activities that generate new artworks and new art experiences.
The museum is a place where anyone can readily experience art through exhibitions and projects, and we are committed to working together with local citizens to facilitate learning through encounters with art. At the heart of our permanent collection are works by artists with a connection to Hachinohe to ensure their preservation for future generations. We aim to create a museum where these encounters between people and art transcend conventional standpoints and frameworks. The learning gained from these relationships fosters creativity and a sensitivity for art, enriching the lives of citizens and their communities in the process.
To assist us in these efforts, the Hachinohe Art Museum calls upon its “Art Farmers,” local citizenry who are actively engaged in museum activities and who cultivate their community through art to ensure an environment where visitors can have a variety of experiences. The citizens, organizations, educational institutions, and companies of Hachinohe that work together on museum activities are called “Co-Creation Partners” and help generate new value in the community.
We also work with local elementary and junior high schools and the Board of Education to empower children and encourage them to think for themselves through our school partnerships. In addition to programs that bring the museum into local schools, we also draw on the expertise of local universities and technical colleges to conduct programs that apply the power of art to other areas and industries that include economics, welfare, and community development.

Two types of spaces to facilitate mutual learning and a wide variety of activities

With its unique and beautiful landscapes, Hachinohe has a culture that is deeply rooted in local customs and folklore. The new museum aims to sow cultural “seeds” and raise them to bear fruit through research, enriching them with new values and finally harvesting them in ways that are accessible to anyone through exhibitions and our permanent collection. Under the premise that everyone is an expert in something, we expect citizens, artists, and museum staff to trade places as they engage in various creative activities. Therefore, we thought that two types of spaces would be necessary to facilitate activities where everyone can learn from each other and where these activities can become the catalyst for creating new works of art. The Giant Room has movable partitions and furniture to enable all kinds of activities to unfold and bring teaching and learning into the same space. It is juxtaposed by a group of private rooms, each with a dedicated function for exhibition or production, allowing for profound learning experiences and interdisciplinary exploration. We believe that the flexibility of these spaces is needed to create enriching opportunities for people to gather, meet, discover, perceive, think, and create.

Hachinohe Art Museum Architects NISHIZAWA Tezzo・ASACO Yoshihide・MORI Junpei