Japan Society Gallery, a quiet spot near the United Nations where East meets West, is celebrating its centennial this year. But with the installation of "Making a Home: Japanese Contemporary artists in New York," an exhibition of work by 33 Japanese-born artists who have moved to New York to pursue their dreams, the place rocks.

The artists were selected by Eric C. Shiner, an independent curator specializing in Japanese contemporary art. The exhibition includes work by well-known artists, some of whom arrived in New York during the 1950s and ‘60s, including Yoko Ono and Ushio Shinohara. It also offers a showcase for a galaxy of emerging artists who recently came here to experience true artistic freedom, which is absent in their homeland. The result is a collection of art in a diverse array of media, motives and methods.

This weekend, Japan Society offers a unique opportunity to meet 11 of the featured artists in their creative environments. An ideal way to participate would be to visit the exhibition on Friday evening, free of charge from 6:00 to 9:00 pm. On Saturday October 20 and Sunday October 21, selected studios will be open from 10:00am to 4:00 pm. Names and addresses are available on the Japan Society website. This program is free of charge.

Left to right: FLOWER gallery (2007) by ON megumi Akiyoshi; Happo-En in NY (Teahouse) (2007) by Yoshiaki Kaihatsu; Shinkai (2007) by Yumi Kori. All from Making a Home: Japanese Contemporary Artists in New York at Japan Society Gallery. Photos: Richard P. Goodbody

The exhibition is organized around six themes closely connected to the notion of what makes a place a home: Building Environments, Intimacy and Identity, Coping with Loss, Meditative Space, The Process of Making, and Referencing the Landscape.

Among the highlights of Building Environments is Teahouse by Yoshiaiki Kaihatsu. This luminous white structure was formed out of discarded Styrofoam electronics packaging scavenged from downtown sidewalks. Held together by toothpicks and lighted from within, the small refuge is home to a video of the artist collecting his materials. This teahouse is not "Japanese" because Kaihatsu appropriated a cultural icon, the label text tells us, but because of Japan's advanced recycling culture.

Another is the decidedly low-tech installation, Space House, by Misaki Kawai. This playful intergalactic abode, made of papier mache and all kinds of found materials, includes a room with a swimming pool in which a group of friends party and watch a TV show featuring themselves. The figures, scrappily stitched together, have faces composed of snapshots of the artist's actual friends.

Coping with Loss addresses the subject of loss and grieving, where home is often the ultimate refuge. One of the most strikingly original of these is a suite of 72 images from 100 Ways to Torture the Innocent, by Ayakoh Furukawa. The piece is based on the artist's attempt to come to terms with the death of her beloved pet hamster, Wachacha. She memorialized and lionized the creature through ink and wash drawings in which he sometimes does cute hamster things (such as eating peanuts or snuggling up to his mistress); or behaves viciously (gnawing on a human finger); or is himself viciously attacked by flesh-eating insects.

In the section called The Process of Making is an exact replica of Satoru Eguchi's studio, constructed of cardboard, paper, glue and paint. Not only does it include furniture and artwork; it also contains art materials, tools and brushes, potted plants, a scale model of the studio, an air conditioner, a vacuum cleaner, wall to wall drawings, a bottle of Windex, a copy of National Geographic and, touchingly, a pair of well-worn slippers nested in a little heap of paper scraps under the desk.

There is much to see and experience here, from a group of nine photographs by Takahiro Kaneyama of his mother and two aunts who raised him in Japan, made over the course of a decade; an eight-by-twelve-foot painting which is vision of upstate New York from above by Junko Yoda, one in a family of three artists included in the show; an installation by Emiko Kasahara in which visitors may sit on the floor and listen to the voices of 410 people around the world recounting their stories of loss in 45 different languages; and ON megumi Akiyoshi's FLOWER gallery, a psychedelic red room designed to induce giddiness.

Making a Home runs at Japan Society Gallery through January 13, 2008. There are several public programs in conjunction with the exhibition, including a lecture on November 6, moderated by Eric C. Shiner, about what it means to make a home.