In Art Place Japan, Fram Kitagawa presents The Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale and the Vision to Reconnect Art and Nature. The Director General describes the transformation of a small corner of rural Japan where, every three years, some of the world's best known artists connect with half a million art lovers who travel to visit the sites.

Every three years, three hundred square miles of land in northwestern Japan are transformed into the most ambitious and largest-scale art installation in the world: the Echigo-Tsumari Art Field. One hundred sixty of the world's best-known landscape artists, sculptors, and architects create artworks in two hundred villages that dot the mountains and terraced rice fields of the Japanese countryside, with the intent of rediscovering relationships between nature, art, and humanity, forging collaborations between global artists and local communities, and connecting people to each other and the land. More than half a million people visit Echigo-Tsumari every year.

The book offers an exhaustive full-color catalogue of the eight hundred artworks created during the past fifteen years. For those lucky enough to visit, this book, the first in English on the subject, also offers detailed information on how to visit the often-remote sites, with travel information and a newly commissioned map that locates the projects throughout the Niigata Prefecture. Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale has been held since 2000.

Art Radar Asia Journal  listed Art Place Japan as one of its top contemporary art history and art books of 2015.

Art Place Japan
The Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale and the Vision to Reconnect Art and Nature
Fram Kitigawa

ISBN 9781616894245
Publication date: November 2015

Princeton Architectural Press
6 x 8.25 inches (15.2 x 21.0 cm), Paperback
304 pages, 233 color illustrations

Download press release: ArtPlaceJapan Release