Art Deco in the Former Prince Asaka Residence
6 - 31 October, 2011

  An Art Deco residence rising in the Shirokane forest: that is the Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum. Walk through the dense growth of trees up the gently curving approach to the museum, and, around the bend, you will find a strikingly modern building.
  The structure now occupied by the museum was built in 1933 as the residence of the Prince Asaka family. The building has the simple exterior characteristic of Modernist architecture. Step inside, however, and the visitor is dazzled by the radiant Art Deco interior. At the main entrance, however, female figures extend their wings in greeting on glass panels designed by Renè Lalique. In the anteroom to its left, the white porcelain Sèvres Perfume Tower soars up, a vision of elegance, surrounded by walls of orange artificial stone. The doors to the Great Dining Hall are covered with mirrors etched with fruit motifs. Indeed, the interior of the former Prince Asaka residence presents the quintessence of twentieth century elegance throughout.
  This exhibition presented this Art Deco masterpiece as a work of art in itself, a work created under the direction of Prince and Princess Asaka by leading French designers, a group of elite architects from the Imperial Household Ministry’s Construction Bureau, and French and Japanese master craftsmen.