The number of visitors to the immensely popular “Study of BABEL” exhibition (venue: Arts & Science LAB 1F), which is being held alongside the “Tower of Babel” exhibition at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum from 18 April, is likely to exceed 40,000 shortly.

After the cooperation agreement between the Tokyo University of the Arts (TUA) and the Netherlands Institute for Conservation, Art and Science (NICAS) was signed, this exhibition was organized as a collaboration project. The exhibition was realized by the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum, a member of NICAS; the Delft University of Technology and TUA, with cooperation from a COI member company, Asahi Shimbun Company.

Click here for details of the exhibition

At this exhibition, we are displaying unprecedentedly unique artworks including a highly detailed reproduction of Pieter Bruegel I’s “Tower of Babel” at 110% size, made for research purposes (Clone Cultural Property, created by the Research on culture sharing group); a 3D version of the “Tower of Babel” at a height of 340cm (Yukino Oishi, team leader and Project Researcher) and a film projection of what the “Tower of Babel” might look like at night.

Particularly unique is the app “let’s work at Babel” – the idea originated in Yuta Sasaki, Project Researcher. The visitors are invited to take photos of their faces with a tablet which is then reflected onto the small bodies, only a few centimeters tall, inside the tower so visitors can join the construction work. This hands-on display seems to be popular with the visitors.

In addition, we distributed uchiwa fans with a design inspired by the tower which was popular, and every other Friday evening, we organized the “art project of light” where lit mini towers were placed along the road from the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum to TUA’s Arts & Science LAB., in collaboration with the Ueno Cultural Park Project team.

On 12 May, we had a “Babel night” event, where a 3DCG projection mapping was shown on against the whole of the side wall of the Ueno Royal Museum. A powerful film material as well as music of the same era (virtual concert) by the musical unit “Team Monteverdi” that COI’s group leader Akira Senju created, made the visitors, which was over 1,000 in number, scream “bravo!”.

This creation of a new inspirational exhibition has been widely appreciated in many fields and has been featured in various media including NHK’s “Metropolitan are Network” (9 May); NHK’s Radio 1 “Thinking ahead! Evening News” (10 May); NHK’s E-TV “Sunday Museum” (28 May), and other newspapers and magazine articles.

The exhibition only has 10 days left. If you have not yet visited the exhibition, please come to Ueno.