The independent curator Takashi Azumaya died Oct 16 at the age of 44, it has been announced. After completing his MFA in 1994 at Tokyo University of the Arts, Azumaya worked as a curator at the Setagaya Art Museum and at the Mori Art Museum before going independent. Major exhibitions organized by Azumaya include “Art / Domestic: Temperature of the Time” in 1999 at the Setagaya Art Museum, “Shinro Ohtake: Dub-Kei” in 2000 at Kirin Plaza Osaka, and “Gundam: Generating Futures” in 2005-07 at multiple venues starting with the Suntory Museum, Osaka. More recently, he was artistic director of the 2010 Busan Biennale. In March of this year, he organized an exhibition of the multimedia installation artist Jio Shimizu for Tokyo’s Misa Shin Gallery.