Art in the Open

Located within the Fuji Hakone Izu National Park, the Hakone Open-Air Museum opened in 1969 as the first open-air art museum in Japan. Over 100 masterpieces by world-renowned creators of modern and contemporary art are on display. Among the artists represented are Constantin Brancusi, Alberto Giacometti, Auguste Rodin, Joan Miró, and Henry Moore.

When I visited the museum last fall I was especially impressed by one of Arnaldo Pomodoro’s huge bronze spheres, pictured here. Pomodoro is an Italian sculptor who currently lives and works in Milan. His spheres can also be seen in the Vatican Museums, Trinity College, Dublin, the United Nations Headquarters in New York, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, and the University of California, Berkeley.