Tokyo Metropolitan Museum
Established1926 (1926)
LocationTokyo, Japan
Coordinates35°43′02″N 139°46′22″E / 35.7172°N 139.7729°E / 35.7172; 139.7729
TypeArt museum
Collection size49 objects
ArchitectKunio Maekawa
Public transit access
Websitewww.tobikan.jp/en/index.html

The Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum (東京都美術館, Tōkyōto Bijutsukan) is a museum of art located in Ueno Park, Tokyo, Japan. It is one of Japan's many museums which are supported by a prefectural government.[1] The first public art museum in Japan, it opened in 1926 as the Tokyo Prefectural Art Museum and was renamed in 1943 after Tokyo became a metropolitan prefecture. The museum's current building was constructed in 1975 and designed by modernist architect Kunio Maekawa, remaining one his most well-known works today.

Currently, the museum is perhaps best known for showing high-profile temporary exhibitions of both Japanese and international modern art, recently showing major retrospectives of Tarō Okamoto, Isamu Noguchi, Edvard Munch, and Tsuguharu Foujita. Highlights of the museum’s permanent collection include twelve twentieth-century sculptures and reliefs that are on permanent display throughout the museum, as well as a collection of calligraphic works.

History

The Tokyo Prefectural Art Museum was first conceptualized with the support of Japanese industrialist Keitaro Sato, a coal magnate from Kyushu. In March 1921, he donated one million yen to the prefectural government with the aims of establishing a “permanent art museum” to conserve the nation’s art and to “promote new works of art for the future,” as dictated in a letter to then Governor Hiroshi Abe in April of that same year. The open letter quickly gained traction with local and national news outlets, and five years, later, on May 1st, 1926, the Tokyo Prefectural Art Museum opened.[2]

Upon its opening, the new institution was quickly lambasted by several art critics, with high-profile critic Shizuka Shikazaki deriding it as a “complete failure,” due to the fact that, despite its objective of being a “permanent art museum,” the museum itself did not have a permanent collection, and was mainly used as leased exhibition space to local art collectives. Just two years later, criti Seisui Sakai cwrote a similarly critical review, stating that the museum would not truly be complete until it had established a permanent collection.[3]

Despite these early criticisms, the museum would not begin amassing a permanent collection until the 1970s, due to a combination of pressures by local artist collectives and turbulent trajectory of the physical site itself, which began deteriorating in the 1960s and was replaced by a new museum building in 1975. The original site was then demolished and the remaining space repurposed as a garden.[4]

The Museum Today: Mission, Programming, and Layout

Mission

In 2012, upon the occasion of its grand reopening, the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum established a new administrative policy to expand upon its founding goal “to promote the advance of art for the sake of the city’s residents.” This new policy promotes the museum as an inclusive “doorway to art,” accessible to people of all ages and abilities.

In line with this mission, the museum outlines four “active roles” on its website:

  1. To foster interchange among people and generate new values.
  2. To impart vitality to people’s art activities and deepen their appreciation of art.
  3. To respect tradition, give new life to tradition, and enable new fusions.
  4. To offer encounters with art masterpieces from Japan and around the world.[5]

Layout

The museum consists of five floors: a lobby basement level, a first floor, a second floor, and two lower basement levels. In addition to a number of gallery and exhibition spaces, the museum also contains a museum shop, café, restaurant, auditorium, library & archives, and the Sato Keitaro Memorial Lounge.[6]

Programming

Along with a slate of temporary, permanent, and thematic exhibitions, the museum also has established an "Art Communication" initiative that seeks to establish the institution as a "doorway to art." This initiative comprises and participates in a number of projects, including:

  • The Tobira Project: A multi-museum social design project that recruits and trains volunteer museum and programming guides within the local community.[7]
  • Museum Start iUeno: Museum education activities for children organized across nine museums around Ueno Park [8]
  • Creative Ageing Zuttobi: Participatory programming aimed for older adults[9]
  • School and educational visits: The museum organizes a number of tours and training for school groups and educators.
  • Special visiting days for people with disabilities: On days that special exhibitions are closed to the general public, the museum organizes special exhibition viewings for people with disabilities.
  • Architectural Tours: These tours, facilitated by the Tobira Project, focus on the architecture of the Museum.[10]

Collection

The Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art's permanent collection was relocated to the Tokyo Museum of Contemporary Art in 1994 but later returned to the former on the occasion of its reopening in 2012. The collection includes twelve pieces of sculpture from the 1970s and 80s, currently displayed around the museum, as well as 36 pieces of Japanese calligraphy.[11]

In addition to the permanent collection, a key highlight of the museum is the architecture of the building itself. The current structure, designed in 1975 by modernist architect Kunio Maekawa, was built with the surrounding green space of Ueno park in mind and has been praised by critics and visitors alike for an aesthetic that is avant-garde yet simultaneously harmonious with the nature surrounding it.[12]

Exhibitions

The museum holds around 280 exhibitions per year.[13] It is particularly known for hosting large traveling exhibitions by globally high-profile artists, including French Impressionists, Dutch Masters, and Italian Renaissance painters, as well as collections from other major museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Louvre, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

In addition to these “blockbuster” exhibitions, the museum puts on frequent shows from its permanent collection, as well as yearly showcases of contemporary Japanese calligraphy. Through initiatives such as the Ueno Artist Project, the museum also organizes thematic exhibitions featuring the work of both established and up-and-coming Japanese artists.

Selected List of Exhibitions (from 2012-present)

  • Early, Sea and Sky: Nature in Western Art; Masterpieces from the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2012-2013)
  • El Greco’s Visual Poetics (2013)
  • The Mediterranean World: The Collection from the Louvre (2014)
  • The Centennial Exhibition of the Japan Art Institute’s Revival: The Masterpieces of Nihonga (2014)
  • Arte a Firenze da Botticelli a Bronzio: verso una maniera moderna (2014)
  • The British Museum Exhibition: A History of the World in 100 Objects (2015)
  • Legendary Artists of Japanese Western Painting: The Centennial of the NIKA Exhibition (2015)
  • Impressionist Masterpieces from the Musée Marmottan Monet (2015)
  • Botticelli and His Time (2015-2016)
  • The 300th Anniversary of His Birth: Jakuchū (2016)
  • Masterpieces from the Centre Pompidou: Timeline 1906-1977 (2016)
  • Van Gogh and Gauguin: Reality and Imagination (2016)
  • Titian and the Renaissance in Venice (2017)
  • Great Collectors: Masterpieces from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2017)
  • Van Gogh and Japan (2017-2018)
  • Brueghel: 150 Years of an Artistic Dynasty (2018)
  • Foujita: A Retrospective—Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of his Death (2018)
  • Munch: A Retrospective (2018-2019)
  • Lineage of Eccentrics: The Miraculous World of Edo Painting (2019)
  • Gustav Klimt: Vienna — Japan 1900 (2019)
  • Masterpieces of Impressionism: The Courtauld Collection (2019)
  • Vilhelm Hammershøi and Danish Painting of the 19th Century (2020)
  • Yoshida Hiroshi: Commemorating the 70th Anniversary of His Death (2021)
  • Isamu Noguchi: Ways of Discovery (2021)
  • Collecting Van Gogh: Helene Kröller-Müller’s Passion for Vincent’s Art (2021)
  • THE GREATS: Masterpieces from the National Galleries of Scotland (2022)
  • Okamoto Tarō: A Retrospective (2022)
  • Henri Matisse: The Path to Color (2023)[14]

Access

See Also

Japanese Museums of Modern and Contemporary Art

Buildings Designed by Kunio Maekawa

References

  1. ↑ Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005). "Museums" in Japan Encyclopedia, pp. 671-673.
  2. ↑ Masaaki Morita, The Empty Museum: Western Cultures and the Artistic Field in Modern Japan. New York: Routledge, 2010. P. 64.
  3. ↑ Ibid, 65-67.
  4. ↑ "Museum History," Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum Website, https://www.tobikan.jp/en/outline/history.html (accessed 10 July 2023)
  5. ↑ "The Museum's Mission and 4 Active Roles," Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum Website, https://www.tobikan.jp/en/outline/mission.html (accessed 11 July 2023)
  6. ↑ "Floor Map," Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum Website, https://www.tobikan.jp/en/guide/floormap.html (accessed 13 July 2023)
  7. ↑ Tobira Project Official Website, https://tobira-project.info/top_e (accessed 18 July 2023)
  8. ↑ "ABOUT: All About Museum Start iUeno," iUeno Official Website, https://museum-start.jp/en/about (accessed 19 July 2023)
  9. ↑ Creative Ageing Zuttobi Official Website, https://www.zuttobi.com/ (accessed 19 July 2023)
  10. ↑ "About Art Communication, Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, https://www.tobikan.jp/en/learn/index.html (accessed 10 July 2023).
  11. ↑ "The Collection," Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art Website, https://www.tobikan.jp/en/archives/collection.html (accessed 10 July 2023).
  12. ↑ "東京都美術館," Tokyo Art Beat, https://www.tokyoartbeat.com/venues/-/0B4D9854 (accessed 17 July 2023).
  13. ↑ "東京都美術館," Bijutsu Techō, https://bijutsutecho.com/museums-galleries/26 (accessed 18 July 2023)
  14. ↑ "Exhibitions," Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, https://www.tobikan.jp/en/exhibition/index.html (accessed 14 July 2023).
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