Maebashi’s First International Art Festival Turns a Gunma City Into a Gallery

The inaugural Maebashi International Art Festival is running through December 20 in the capital of Gunma Prefecture, about an hour and a half from Tokyo by train, Tokyo Weekender reports.

Planned as a biennale, the festival spreads its works across a compact, walkable downtown, using a former department store now called Arts Maebashi, the Shiroiya Hotel, the Orion-dori shopping arcade and other once-neglected buildings as venues.

Highlights include a treehouse by Tadashi Kawamata, a fish-silhouette installation by Alexa Kumiko Hatanaka and the first showing in Japan of a work by Martin Margiela, alongside architecture by Sou Fujimoto and Akihisa Hirata.

Read the original story at Tokyo Weekender.