Tag - museum

 
 

MUSEUM

Takuro Tamayama’s sculpture “Models (Pair, 6 sets, 12 rings)” comes with a mathematical formation that scales it for different spaces.
CULTURE / Art
Apr 20, 2025
The floor is art: Takuro Tamayama transforms mundanity
With “Takuro Tamayama: Floor,” the artist, at 34, has become the youngest person to ever hold a solo show at the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art.
In a workshop organized by the Japanese American National Museum, teachers visited the site of an internment camp in Manzanar, California. Photo taken from YouTube.
JAPAN
Apr 10, 2025
Japanese American National Museum hit with subsidy cuts
The Japanese American National Museum, or JANM, in Los Angeles is struggling with subsidy cuts by the Elon Musk-led "Department of Government Efficiency," also known as DOGE.
Digital artist Polygon1993 revels in the physicality of nostalgic technology, making art out of materials such as miniature CDs, holographic prints layered with plexiglass shards and a giant custom-made floppy disk.
CULTURE / Art
Apr 8, 2025
Online art scene eager to go offline, at least for the moment
From Beeple exhibiting a physical version of an NFT artwork to Polygon1993’s custom-made giant floppy disk, digital media artists are bringing their work into the physical world.
The city of Kurayoshi in Tottori Prefecture celebrated the opening of its public art museum with festivities such as a parade that drew 1,000 revelers.
CULTURE / Art
Apr 4, 2025
Tottori takes a bold leap forward in the arts
The prefecture's new art museum aims to engage the community through interactive activities rather than merely showcasing boundary-pushing art.
An expanded multilevel pond and devices spraying cold mist have been installed at the Omiya Bonsai Art Museum to protect against the dangers of warming summers on the institution's trees.
LIFE / Travel
Mar 24, 2025
World’s first public bonsai museum reopens after renovations
After a five-month refurbishment, the Omiya Bonsai Art Museum believes it’s better suited to care for its trees during intensifying summers.
Excerpts from Natsume Soseki’s “Ten Nights of Dreams” and footage of dancer Min Tanaka and "shō" player Mayumi Miyata play across three large screens that are reflected in a mirror-like pool of water in the installation “Time Time.”
CULTURE / Art
Mar 4, 2025
Crowds shouldn’t stop you from seeing the hit Ryuichi Sakamoto exhibit
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo’s “Seeing Sound, Hearing Time” has far exceeded expected visitor numbers, but there could be an upside to the crowds.
Toyohara Kunichika experimented with established norms of composition and began spreading a single figure over three full sheets, as seen in this “Kabuki Play 'Kagamiyama Gonichi no Iwafuji'” triptych.
CULTURE / Art
Feb 15, 2025
Kunichika's vibrant ukiyo-e gets a chance to shine at anniversary exhibit
An underappreciated ukiyo-e master is the focus of the largest-ever retrospective of his work in Japan, marking the 190th anniversary of his birth.
From the mid-2000s onward, Ryuichi Sakamoto created a number of installation works, often in collaboration with Shiro Takatani, of multimedia art collective Dumb Type.
CULTURE / Art
Jan 17, 2025
A slow dive into ‘a moment and an eternity’ with Ryuichi Sakamoto
New exhibition “Seeing Sound, Hearing Time” is the first comprehensive overview of the musician’s installation work presented in Japan.
Alarmo and other recent products reflect Nintendo's strategy of using its iconic intellectual properties to engage users while preparing for the inevitable transition to a successor console after the Nintendo Switch.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Nov 24, 2024
Nintendo’s latest device, the Alarmo, is a $100 wake-up call
Alarmo and other recent products reflect Nintendo's strategy of leveraging its iconic IPs to engage users as it prepares for the successor to the Nintendo Switch.
Yuko Mohri uses “invisible forces” — gravity, weather, air, magnetic fields — to create jazzy kinetic sculptures.
CULTURE / Art
Nov 1, 2024
Yuko Mohri is a maestro of unstable elements
After a banner year at the Venice Biennale, the creator of jazzy kinetic sculptures opens her first large-scale exhibition in Japan.
The Grand Egyptian Museum, built with the help from Japan, is showcasing over 10,000 ancient Egyptian artifacts.
JAPAN
Oct 21, 2024
Japan-aided Grand Egyptian Museum opens exhibition for trial run
Low-interest yen loans from the Japanese government totaling around ¥84.2 billion were used to build the museum.
Bourgeois is perhaps best known among the general public for her giant steel spider sculptures, particularly in Tokyo, where a nearly 10-meter tall bronze cast of the original spider has loomed over the walkway in Roppongi Hills since 2003.
CULTURE / Art
Oct 4, 2024
Japan’s biggest Louise Bourgeois exhibit yet leans into ambivalence
At Tokyo’s Mori Art Museum, a large-scale retrospective of the visionary artist emphasizes her complex feelings toward femininity, memory, parenthood and the human body.
The Nintendo Museum opens to the public on Oct. 2, but unlike the company's all-ages games, the new attraction may be geared more toward older rather than younger gamers.
LIFE / Travel
Sep 25, 2024
A first look inside the new Nintendo Museum
Set to open on Oct. 2, the gaming giant's newest foray into real-world experiences shows flashes of the same creativity that made the company what it is today.
Breakdancer Shigeyuki Nakarai (left) and fencer Misaki Emura attend an opening event for an exhibition on Japanese Olympic athletes at the Paris Games at the Japan Olympic Museum in Tokyo on Tuesday.
JAPAN
Sep 10, 2024
Exhibition on Japanese Olympians at Paris Starts in Tokyo
The event showcases items of clothing and equipment used by the athletes during the Games.
A wall mural depicting Nintendo's Super Mario characters in an underground walkway in Kyoto. The company will open the Nintendo Museum in October.
BUSINESS / Companies
Aug 20, 2024
Nintendo to open museum showcasing video game history this fall
The museum in Uji, Kyoto Prefecture, will feature vintage video games and an interactive shoot-em-up with Super Mario characters.
Shinsaku Otomo (center) became the 1 millionth visitor to the Iwate Tsunami Memorial Museum on Sunday.
JAPAN
Jun 3, 2024
Iwate Tsunami Memorial Museum reaches 1 million visitors
Opened in September 2019, the museum features 150 items, including a tsunami-hit fire truck and panels on disaster response and evacuation lessons.
The eighth edition of the Yokohama Triennale, held at the Yokohama Museum of Art, opened in March this year with the theme “Wild Grass: Our Lives."
CULTURE / Art
May 14, 2024
Yokohama Triennale's eighth edition makes room for context
Curators Liu Ding and Carol Yinghua Lu's dynamic and vital show positions art at the vanguard of social change.
A view of Matazo Kayama’s folding screen paintings reproduced on ceramic panels by Otsuka Ohmi Ceramics, displayed at Simose Art Museum.
CULTURE / Art
May 11, 2024
Art and architecture come together at Simose Art Museum
Tradition and innovation converge at Shimose Art Museum. For it first anniversary, the venue is spotlighting trailblazer nihonga artist Matazo Kayama.
While the visual cues of cartoonishness, color and bounciness suggest fun and innocence, Saeborg’s “Saedog” performance nudges the audience toward contemplating captivity and confinement.
CULTURE / Art
May 2, 2024
Art award show offers trippy scenes of seeing and being seen
The two winners of the Tokyo Contemporary Art Award offer provocatively contrasting work at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo.
Theaster Gates' “A Heavenly Chord” lines up church pews before seven speakers and a Hammond B3 organ, a type of electric organ prevalent in Black American churches.
CULTURE / Art
Apr 27, 2024
Theaster Gates’ ambitious ‘Afro-Mingei’ brings Black Chicago to Tokyo
The largest solo show ever of a Black artist in Japan is an absorbing history lesson that draws a line between Chicago and Aichi.

Longform

Visitors walk past Sou Fujimoto's Grand Ring, which has been recognized as the largest wooden structure in the world.
Can a World Expo still matter? Japan is about to find out.