During an economically challenging period for many cultural institutions, a collective of artists and engineers have lured millions of visitors into their global network of nearly 60 perfectly Instagrammable, immersive art centers and exhibitions, expanding from Japan to China and Saudi Arabia, and, soon, to the United Arab Emirates.
Last year, according to the collective, nearly 2.5 million people visited teamLab Planets Tokyo, one of the empire’s two permanent locations in the city, spending about $25 each on a barefoot experience through a borderless world of art and science that involves dipping into the milky waters of a digital koi pond and crawling under a hanging garden of some 13,000 orchids.
Backstage at what some consider the greatest show in Japan, a small army of technicians roamed dark hallways. They checked on the projectors, lightbulbs and chlorine levels that keep their exhibitions in operation, with sold-out tickets and revenue numbers that can rival those of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and maybe the Museum of Modern Art. At teamLab Planets, revenue is close to $60 million, based on a rough calculation of attendance and ticket sales, though the company shares a portion of its proceeds with its sponsor, an e-commerce company named DMM.com.
Many elements of the company’s success are still shrouded in secrecy, according to art experts who have studied the company. TeamLab, a private company, is wary to disclose information about its financial history the way that most art exhibitors of its size do.
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“It’s more like an art amusement park or playground,” said Thu-Huong Ha, a culture critic at The Japan Times. “TeamLab also separates itself from the conventions of the art world — it doesn’t credit its artists or discuss craft, and it has a direct relationship with consumers that can circumnavigate gallerists and institutions — in a way that it seems to think is subversive but just ends up smelling corporate.”
So — is teamLab indeed the greatest show in the country, or is it, as some carp, a tourist trap?
“Here’s a better angle,” Takashi Kudo, 47, one of the core members of the art collective, said as he guided a reporter tiptoeing through the rafters dozens of feet above the digital koi, which reappear as streams of colors when visitors bump into their silhouettes, projected on the waters. Children sloshing around the virtual fish oohed and aahed as the environment changed around them.
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