A message from the Director

Thank you for visiting the official website of the Shibuya Higashi Archives.

The Shibuya Higashi Archives is a facility said to exist on the east side of Shibuya, standing between what is shown and what is not. It was conceived, before it was ever a place to exhibit works of art, as a place that keeps the hours in which a work has not yet spoken, or the silence after it has finished speaking.

A museum, as a rule, is an institution that hangs works on bright walls and offers them up to be seen. But not every work wishes to be seen at once. At times, a work needs rest. At times, it is the visitor who is not yet ready for the encounter.

For this reason, the Archives gives the same weight to accessioning, concealing, waiting, and almost forgetting as it gives to exhibiting.

The activities of the Archives are not confined to physical architecture. Through the official exhibitions app, each visitor may open the doors of the stores in the palm of their hand. The exhibition rooms there appear on no actual map; as places of encounter with works of art, however, they are real enough.

Art is not only what can be seen.
History is not only what has been recorded.
And just because something is not on view does not mean it does not exist.

The Shibuya Higashi Archives will continue to light this ambiguous territory as carefully as it can.

Please take your time. Be advised, however, that if you look too long, the work may come to remember you first.