Koichi Watari, 60, has lived and breathed art since childhood, but whether he was always a fan is another story.
¡°You could say I positively disliked art, and it was in part because my mother would always take me and my sister to all these museums,¡± he says. ¡°They were stuffy places and there was nothing fun about them.¡±
Watari¡¯s mother, Shizuko, opened a small gallery in 1972 that was expanded in 1990 to become the Watari Museum of Contemporary Art, commonly referred to as the Watari-um. Since its early days as a gallery, the institution has been a champion of promoting conceptual art and other noncommercial artists in Japan and there are few cultural institutions here that can compare in terms of a willingness to explore new artistic ideas.
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