National Crafts Museum in Kanazawa 20201116-001

The in

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.46 ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

, is the foremost museum collecting and exhibiting modern Japanese art. This Tokyo museum is also known by the English acronym MOMAT (National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo). The museum is known for its collection of 20th-century art and includes Western-style and

Nihonga ''Nihonga'' (, "Japanese-style paintings") are Japanese paintings from about 1900 onwards that have been made in accordance with traditional Japanese artistic conventions, techniques and materials. While based on traditions over a thousand years ...

artists.

History

The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, was the first National Museum of Art in Japan and dates back to 1952, when it was established as an institution governed by the Ministry of Education. The architect of the building was

Kunio Maekawa was a Japanese architect and a key figure in Japanese postwar modernism. His distinctive architectural language deftly blended together elements of traditional Japanese design and modernist tenets from Europe, drawing from early career work ex ...

. On two later occasions, neighbouring premises were purchased and the Museum was further enlarged. The most recent re-design of MOMAT was conceived by Yoshirō Taniguchi (father of

Yoshio Taniguchi Yoshio Taniguchi (谷口吉生, ''Taniguchi Yoshio''; born 1937) is a Japanese architect best known for his redesign of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, which was reopened November 20, 2004. Critics have emphasized Taniguchi's fusion ...

who designed the extension of

MOMA Moma may refer to: People * Moma Clarke (1869–1958), British journalist * Moma Marković (1912–1992), Serbian politician * Momčilo Rajin (born 1954), Serbian art and music critic, theorist and historian, artist and publisher Places ; ...

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

Collections

The collection contains many notable Japanese artists since the

Meiji period The is an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868 to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonization ...

as well as a few contemporary Western prints. In the early years of the 20th century, Matsukata Kojiro collected Japanese ''

ukiyo-e Ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese art which flourished from the 17th through 19th centuries. Its artists produced woodblock prints and paintings of such subjects as female beauties; kabuki actors and sumo wrestlers; scenes from history and folk ta ...

'' woodblock prints which had been scattered throughout the world. The 1925 exhibition of the woodblock prints Matsukata collected abroad is thought to have been the first of its kind in Japan. Today approximately 8,000 ukiyo-e prints from the Matsukata collection are housed in the Tokyo National Museum. NMWA collection
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Crafts Gallery

In 1977, the museum opened an annex, the Kōgeikan Crafts Gallery, that collects and exhibits

textiles Textile is an umbrella term that includes various fiber-based materials, including fibers, yarns, filaments, threads, different fabric types, etc. At first, the word "textiles" only referred to woven fabrics. However, weaving is not the ...

ceramics A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porcelain ...

lacquer Lacquer is a type of hard and usually shiny coating or finish applied to materials such as wood or metal. It is most often made from resin extracted from trees and waxes and has been in use since antiquity. Asian lacquerware, which may be c ...

, and other Japanese crafts as well as craft and design from around the world dating from the late 19th century to the present. Its collection focus in particular is the work of Japanese Living National Treasures. The Crafts Gallery maintains its own research library. In 2020, as part of the Japanese government's policy to revitalize local areas, the Crafts Gallery was relocated to

Kanazawa is the capital city of Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 466,029 in 203,271 households, and a population density of 990 persons per km2. The total area of the city was . Overview Cityscape File:もて� ...

and the National Crafts Museum was opened there. Even after the relocation, the official name is still the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo Craft Gallery.

National Film Center

Up until April 2018, the National Museum of Modern Art housed the National Film Center (NFC), which was Japan's only public institution devoted to cinema. In April 2018, the NFC became independent of the Art Museum and was officially elevated to the rank of a national museum under the name the

National Film Archive of Japan The is an independent administrative institution and one of Japan's seven national museums of art, which specializes in preserving and exhibiting the film heritage of Japan. In its previous incarnation, it was the National Film Center, which was ...

Union catalog

The "Union Catalog of the Collections of the National Art Museums, Japan" is a consolidated catalog of material held by the four Japanese national art museums—the National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto ( MOMAK), the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo (MOMAT), the National Museum of Art in Osaka ( NMAO), and the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo ( NMWA): IAI-National Museums of Art union catalog
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National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto The is an art museum in Kyoto, Japan. This Kyoto museum is also known by the English acronym MoMAK (Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto). History The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto (MoMAK) was initially created as the Annex Museum of the Natio ...

(MOMAK). MOMAK union catalog
/ref> * National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (MOMAT) *

National Museum of Art, Osaka is a subterranean Japanese art museum located on the island of Nakanoshima, located between the Dōjima River and the Tosabori River, about 10 minutes west of Higobashi Station in central Osaka. The official Japanese title of the museum tran ...

(NMAO) * National Museum of Western Art (NMWA) The online version of this union catalog is currently under construction, with only selected works available at this time.

Notes

References

* Checkland, Olive. (2002)
''Japan and Britain After 1859: Creating Cultural Bridges.''
London:

Routledge Routledge () is a British multinational publisher. It was founded in 1836 by George Routledge, and specialises in providing academic books, journals and online resources in the fields of the humanities, behavioural science, education, law ...

. * Falk, Ray.
"French Art in Tokyo,"
''New York Times.'' June 21, 1959.

External links

*
National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (in English)

Artfacts.netMOMAT overview

* ttp://www.leiko.info/index.php?id=2428 Show of Leiko Ikemura in the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo 2012 {{Authority control National museums of Japan Buildings and structures in Chiyoda, Tokyo Art museums and galleries in Tokyo Modern art museums in Japan Art museums established in 1952 1952 establishments in Japan