The years are passing too quickly for this no-longer-young critic. Lest you think me embittered, let me start this year in review on a high note by trumpeting the star of 2004, a grand old dame who looks as bright and new as the day she was born -- the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art. Built in the Bauhaus style by Jin Watanabe in 1938, the wonderfully comfortable Hara marked its 25th year as a museum this past November.

This really was the Hara's year: They scooped up Japan's hottest photographer, Rika Noguchi, for her solo show "I Dreamt of Flying"; and had another of the top exhibitions of the last 12 months in the delightful "Joy of Life," which spotlighted African photographers D'Okhai Ojeikere and Malick Sidibe. The Hara and its sister space, the Arata Isozaki-designed Hara ARC in Gunma, are feel-good places, home to daring curators, run by a staff that seems to really enjoy their work, and presided over by director Toshio Hara, who, with his Yohji Yamamoto suits and gold-topped walking stick, has to be one of the coolest Tokyoites who will turn 70 this year.

The Hara also premiered a new permanent installation on their 25th anniversary. "My Drawing Room," a fun and informal mockup of Yoshitomo Nara's studio in Germany, occupied the space at the end of the last second-floor gallery, a nook which, in a rare incidence of misjudgment for the Hara a few years ago, had hosted an installation of pornographic tripe by Nobuyoshi Araki.