State Of The Arts
BRUSH UP: Tokyo Art Beat covers over 500 venues
DESIGN FESTA
When Paul Baron first moved to Tokyo from London, he found it hard to keep up with the Japanese capital's prolific art scene. Language barriers and a lack
of timely information meant that the recent art-school graduate was always hearing about exhibitions he wanted to see the day after they closed. So Baron teamed up with a couple of friends two years ago and launched tokyoartbeat.com — a bilingual website listing shows at over 500 Tokyo galleries and museums.
Exhibitions are organized by location, popularity, genre and other handy categories, but one of the site's most useful features is the Google Map mashup overlaid with gallery locations, making it easy for visitors to plot an afternoon's art hopping. Users can also bookmark their favorite shows and venues, and request e-mail reminders of exhibitions. These user-friendly enhancements are born of Baron's own experience as a gallery buff. "We are our best users," he says. "We don't pretend to know anything about art. We just enjoy going to shows." Baron extends his beat to the Kansai region later this year, with an edition of the site dedicated to art happenings in Osaka, Kobe and other major centers.
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