TOKYO – From Nov 7 to 9, lime green buses on seven citywide routes will ferry art lovers for free to the doorsteps of over 50 of Tokyo’s contemporary art institutions as part of the annual Art Week Tokyo (AWT), which opened to the public on Nov 5.

A separate set of express buses will also take visitors from the event’s flagship selling exhibition at the Okura Museum of Art – which brings together some 100 artworks from the event’s participating galleries – to four art spaces across Tokyo, including the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo and SMBC East Tower, where 10 video works are on show.

At the opening ceremony of the What Is Real? exhibition held at the Okura Museum of Art – Japan’s oldest private museum – on Nov 5, AWT founder Atsuko Ninagawa welcomed visitors in a brief speech in Japanese noting the “creativity and diversity of Tokyo’s contemporary art scene” and the opportunity to buy art at the centrepiece show.

Contemporary art framed Buddhist antiquities in the museum, which was packed shoulder to shoulder with international media, curators and collectors. Curator Szymczyk said he was looking for the “smallest common denominator” of reality in his curation of a show that gestures to the loss of common ground in contemporary society.