On a Sunday morning in January, the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT) in Kiba Park was flooded with bright winter light and a throng of people. Visitors waited in densely packed lines to see “Ryuichi Sakamoto: Seeing Sound, Hearing Time,” billed as the largest solo exhibition dedicated to the composer and musician who died in March 2023. The sign propped by the start of the line read “Wait time: 60 minutes.”
The show has been a smash hit, far exceeding the expectations of the curatorial team. At the time of writing, tickets are sold out for the following weekend. For the remaining month of the show, visitors under 18 can enter for free, which may only boost crowds further.
A month into the show’s opening, long lines and wait times prompted the museum to introduce additional crowd control measures. On Jan. 29, MOT established date-specific ticketing, and two weeks later began restricting which works could be photographed or video recorded. The museum also rerouted the entry point for “Life-Well Tokyo, Fog Sculpture #47662” a collaboration with fog artist Fujiko Nakaya and Dumb Type’s Shiro Takatani, presumably to decrease congestion while people wait for the installation to start. This is arguably the most Instagrammable work of the video- and sound-heavy exhibit, so it’s bound to draw people needing something good for the grid.
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