Various movies were shown at the Christo and Jeanne-Claude: LʼArc de Triomphe, Wrapped, Paris exhibition

The Suntory Museum of Art is located in Tokyo Midtown in Akasaka. As its name suggests, the museum was founded by Keizo Saji, the second son of Suntory's founder and its second president. The museum, which also houses a national treasure, a handbasket made in the Kamakura period (1185-1333) and decorated with maki-e lacquer, has a stylish appearance despite its collection of mainly antique art. The design was supervised by Kengo Kuma.

Although not in the spotlight as much as the Suntory Museum of Art, Tokyo Midtown is home to other art and design-related institutions. One such facility is 21_21 DESIGN SIGHT, which I visited that day. Designed by Tadao Ando, this facility is a bit different from the Suntory Museum of Art, although it hosts similar art-related exhibitions. According to its official website, it is "a place to think about various events and things through design, and to communicate and propose them to the world." It is not a space that simply displays finished works of art.

The exhibition at 21_21 DESIGN SIGHT was called "Christo and Jeanne-Claude: LʼArc de Triomphe, Wrapped, Paris". The "LʼArc de Triomphe, Wrapped" is literally a work of art in which the famous Arc de Triomphe in Paris is wrapped in fabric. In a word, Christo and Jeanne-Claude are wrapping artists. They have wrapped not only the Arc de Triomphe, but also the Pont Neuf Bridge, the Reichstag in Germany, and Snoopy's house. The exhibition showed the long road to the realization of the "LʼArc de Triomphe, Wrapped" through the stages of conception, preparation, installation and realization. As it is said that it took 60 years from conception to realization, the materials on display were so vast that it would have taken hours just to watch all the videos shown in the exhibition.