Thirty Exhibitions to Look Forward to in 2024【Tokyo】
From top left: “Van Gogh Alive” (Warehouse Terrada G1 Building; Photo by Grande Experiences); Takuma Nakahira “Burn - Overflow” (The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; © Gen Nakahira); Constantin Brancusi “Carving the Essence” (Artizon Museum); Theaster Gates Exhibition (Mori Art Museum; Photo by ToLoLo studio)
SHARE
Tokyo Art Beat presents a selection of the best exhibitions to see in Tokyo in 2024. Bookmark the exhibitions on the TAB website or TAB app and never miss the openings and closings.
Click here to see the most anticipated exhibitions across the country.
- Van Gogh Alive (Warehouse Terrada G1 Building)
- The Wright Imperial Hotel at 100: Frank Lloyd Wright and the World (Panasonic Shiodome Museum of Art)
- The Artistic Cosmos of Hon’ami Kōetsu (Tokyo National Museum)
- Glass Tableware in Still Life: Yoko Andersson Yamano and 18 Painters (Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery)
- Frontiers of Impressionism: Paintings from the Worcester Art Museum (Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum)
- Takuma Nakahira “Burn - Overflow” (The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo)
- Henri Matisse – Forms in Freedom (The National Art Center, Tokyo)
- Commemorating the Museum’s 40th Anniversary - The A to Z Guide to the Former Residence of Prince Asaka (Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum)
- Nakaji Yasui 1903-1942: Photographs (Tokyo Station Gallery)
- 100 Years of Paintings at Tama Zensho-en (The National Hansen’s Disease Museum)
- The 100th Anniversary of "Manifeste du Surréalisme" - Surrealism and Japan (Itabashi Art Museum)
- Does the Future Sleep Here? – Revisiting the Museum’s Response to Contemporary Art After 65 Years (National Museum Of Western Art, Tokyo)
- Future Elements: Experimental Laboratory for Prototyping in Science and Design (21_21 Design Sight)
- Constantin Brancusi “Carving the Essence” (Artizon Museum)
- Ho Tzu Nyen Exhibition (Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo)
- Theaster Gates Exhibition (Mori Art Museum)
- Mingei: The Beauty of Everyday Things (Setagaya Art Museum)
- Giorgio De Chirico: Metaphysical Journey (Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum)
- Trio: Modern Art Collections from Paris, Tokyo and Osaka (The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo)
- Paul McCartney Photography Exhibition 1963-64: Eyes of the Storm (Roppongi Hills Tokyo City View)
- Takada Kenzo (Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery)
- Keiichi Tanaami Retrospective (Tentative title) (The National Art Center, Tokyo)
- Showa Modern: The World of Umeki Itaya (Sen-Oku Hakukokan Museum Tokyo)
- Tanaka Isson: Light and Soul (Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum)
- Louise Bourgeois Exhibition (Mori Art Museum)
- Birds (National Museum of Nature and Science)
- Jam Session: The Ishibashi Foundation Collection × Mohri Yuko – On Physis (Artizon Museum)
- Commemorative Reopening Exhibition: Toulouse-Lautrec & Sophie Calle (Tentative title) (Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum, Tokyo)
- Ryuichi Sakamoto Exhibition (Tentative title) (Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo)
Van Gogh Alive (Warehouse Terrada G1 Building)
Warehouse Terrada G1 Building on Tennozu Isle will host an immersive exhibition, Van Gogh Alive, featuring over 3,000 works by Dutch Post-Impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh. Produced by Grande Experiences, the exhibition has previously traveled to 99 cities and attracted over 9 million visitors worldwide. Viewers will be taken on an immersive journey through the life of the world’s most famous painter, traveling to places such as the Netherlands, Paris, Arles, Saint-Rémy, and Auvers-sur-Oise. Find more information in the news article.
Venue: Warehouse Terrada G1 Building
Schedule: January 6 - March 31
The Wright Imperial Hotel at 100: Frank Lloyd Wright and the World (Panasonic Shiodome Museum of Art)
Frank Lloyd Wright is celebrated as one of America’s most famous modern architects. His solo exhibition, previously held at the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, will open at the Panasonic Shiodome Museum of Art in Tokyo. The exhibition will highlight Wright’s innovative endeavors through his interactions with the diverse cultures bridged by the Imperial Hotel and will feature approximately 420 works, including drawings and blueprints, on display for the first time in Japan.
Venue: Panasonic Shiodome Museum of Art
Schedule: January 11 - March 10
The Artistic Cosmos of Hon’ami Kōetsu (Tokyo National Museum)
Hon’ami Koetsu was born into a prestigious family of sword connoisseurs. In addition to his family business, he was involved in various other arts, including Noh, calligraphy, lacquerware, ceramics, and publishing. This exhibition focuses on the inner world of Koetsu and his religious beliefs and features swords handled by the Hon’ami family, calligraphy and ceramics made by Koetsu himself, and items created by artisans with whom he interacted. Don’t miss the opportunity to also catch a Special Exhibition Celebrating the 900th Anniversary of Its Construction, The Golden Hall of Chūson-ji Temple, opening on January 23.
Venue: Tokyo National Museum
Schedule: January 16 - March 10
Glass Tableware in Still Life: Yoko Andersson Yamano and 18 Painters (Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery)
Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery will hold an exhibition of glass tableware, still life paintings, and photographs by Japanese and Swedish artists. In 2018, at the initiative of Yoko Andersson Yamano, the “Glass Tableware in Still Life” project was launched, in which 18 painters painted a series of still lifes depicting glass tableware made by Yamano. Using the old and familiar daily material of glass as a medium, Yamano and the painters from different cultural backgrounds engaged in a dialogue through words and images to create their works.
Venue: Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery
Schedule: January 17 - March 24
Frontiers of Impressionism: Paintings from the Worcester Art Museum (Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum)
On the 150th anniversary of the first Impressionist exhibition, the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum presents an exhibition that traces the impact and influence of Impressionism in Europe and America. Selected from the Worcester Art Museum’s extensive collection of Impressionist art, this exhibition features works by famed French Impressionists Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, the internationally active John Singer Sargent, important American Impressionists such as Childe Hassam, and other notable artists from Germany and Scandinavia.
Venue: Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum
Schedule: January 27 - April 7
Takuma Nakahira “Burn - Overflow” (The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo)
Photographer Takuma Nakahira made a significant mark on production and theory from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s, a turning point in post-war Japanese photography. In the late 1960s, he challenged existing photographic aesthetics with his “are, bure, boke” (grainy, blurry, out-of-focus) images and continued exploring new directions in the 1970s while rejecting his earlier attempts. His radical and provocative stance questioned contemporary photographic expression and the nature of modern society itself. This exhibition will feature approximately 400 works and materials from his early to late years.
Venue: The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo
Schedule: February 6 - April 7
Henri Matisse – Forms in Freedom (The National Art Center, Tokyo)
Henri Matisse is regarded as one of the greatest masters of 20th-century art. In Nice, where he spent most of the latter half of his life, he painted a remarkable variety of models and objects, eventually arriving at the series known as Cut-Outs, in which he cut shapes and images out of colored paper with scissors and pasted them onto other sheets of paper. This exhibition brings together approximately 150 works and archival materials from the collection of the Musée Matisse Nice, France, including paintings, sculptures, prints, and textiles, with a particular focus on the cut-outs.
Venue: The National Art Center, Tokyo
Schedule: February 14 - May 27
Commemorating the Museum’s 40th Anniversary - The A to Z Guide to the Former Residence of Prince Asaka (Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum)
The Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum celebrates its 40th anniversary with an exhibition exploring its architectural history. Initially built in 1933 as the residence of the Asakamiya family, the museum’s building is now designated an Important Cultural Property. Based on the accumulated research and investigation, the exhibition will present key items, each representing aspects such as architectural techniques, people involved in construction, interior design, materials, and anecdotes from different eras.
Venue: Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum
Schedule: February 17 - May 12
*Reservation required
Nakaji Yasui 1903-1942: Photographs (Tokyo Station Gallery)
Nakaji Yasui was an amateur photographer active in the Kansai region before World War II. He pursued diverse photographic expression, from pictorialism to straight photography, photomontage, and street snapshots. This exhibition features 140 vintage prints that survived the war and approximately 60 modern prints created based on investigations of negatives and contact prints.
Venue: Tokyo Station Gallery
Schedule: February 23 - April 14
100 Years of Paintings at Tama Zensho-en (The National Hansen’s Disease Museum)
The National Hansen’s Disease Museum will hold an exhibition introducing the activities of painters at Tama Zensho-en. This exhibition will trace the history of the exhibition from its earliest days to the postwar period and recent years and will focus on painting as a cultural movement.
Venue: The National Hansen’s Disease Museum
Schedule: March 2 - September 1
https://www.nhdm.jp/events/list/6494/
The 100th Anniversary of "Manifeste du Surréalisme" - Surrealism and Japan (Itabashi Art Museum)
The year 2024 marks the 100th anniversary of the publishing of the first surrealist manifesto by André Breton in 1924. Emerging in France, this artistic movement had a significant impact on Japanese painters as well. This exhibition features approximately 120 works and documents by Japanese artists who were devoted to Surrealism during and after the war. Among the exhibiting artists are Seiji Togo, Harue Koga, Kotaro Migishi, Noboru Kitawaki, Aimitsu, Terushichi Hirai, Kiyotaka Asahara, and Kikuji Yamashita.
Venue: The National Hansen’s Disease Museum
Schedule: March 2 - April 14
Does the Future Sleep Here? – Revisiting the Museum’s Response to Contemporary Art After 65 Years (National Museum Of Western Art, Tokyo)
This exhibition will be the first major display of contemporary art at the National Museum of Western Art and will present works by over 20 artists of all ages engaged in experimental artistic activities in Japan today. The exhibiting artists include Yuki Iiyama, Mai Endo, Nodoka Odawara, Ryudai Takano, Koki Tanaka, Elena Tutatchikova, Rei Naito, Yurie Nagashima, and others.
Venue: National Museum Of Western Art, Tokyo
Schedule: March 12 - May 12
Future Elements: Experimental Laboratory for Prototyping in Science and Design (21_21 Design Sight)
21_21 Design Sight will hold a special exhibition introducing the world of design engineering. The exhibition’s director, Shunji Yamanaka, is a design engineer engaged in various industrial products, studying prototypes crystallized from cutting-edge technologies. The exhibition focuses on Yamanaka’s’ prototypes, robots, and sketches made in collaboration with fellow researchers in his university lab. Also included are collaborative works by seven teams of designer-creators and scientist-engineers from different fields.
Venue: 21_21 Design Sight
Schedule: March 29 - August 12
Constantin Brancusi “Carving the Essence” (Artizon Museum)
The Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi is a pioneering artist who carved out new territory in twentieth-century sculpture. This exhibition brings together Brancusi’s’ sculptures with his two-dimensional works, including fresco, tempera, drawings, and photographs. It is the first exhibition in an art museum in Japan to present Brancusi comprehensively.
Venue: Artizon Museum
Schedule: March 30 - July 7
Ho Tzu Nyen Exhibition (Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo)
Singapore-based artist Ho Tzu Nyen creates videos and performances based on Southeast Asian philosophy and history. Many will recall his previous large-scale exhibition at the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Ho Tzu Nyen: Night March of Hundred Monsters. This exhibition will feature six video installations ranging from his early to recent work, as well as his latest work, T for Time, which focuses on the time and our experience of it.
Venue: Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo
Schedule: April 6 - July 7
https://www.mot-art-museum.jp/exhibitions/HoTzuNyen/
Theaster Gates Exhibition (Mori Art Museum)
Theaster Gates is an internationally renowned artist whose practice spans various disciplines and media. This is the first exhibition in Japan to provide a comprehensive overview of his work and his most extensive presentation in the region to date. This exhibition will bring together a wide range of works and projects from Gates’ oeuvre, including significant new works created for the exhibition and works with strong links to Japan: from his artistic origins and projects in the region to what he calls ‘Afro-Mingei,’ a philosophy that Gates has developed based on the cultural possibilities of fusing the Japanese Mingei folk art movement with movements centered on Black beauty and aesthetics.
Venue: Mori Art Museum
Schedule: April 24 - September 1
Mingei: The Beauty of Everyday Things (Setagaya Art Museum)
The Mingei exhibition will travel from the Nakanoshima Museum of Art, Osaka, to the Setagaya Art Museum in April. Focusing on the theme of “clothing, food, and home,” it will showcase approximately 130 pieces of folk art used in everyday life and introduce various production regions and artisans across Japan. Another exhibition highlight is an installation by Terry Ellis and Keiko Kitamura (director of MOGI Folk Art), who have significantly contributed to the current folk art boom.
Venue: Setagaya Art Museum
Schedule: April 24 - June 30
Giorgio De Chirico: Metaphysical Journey (Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum)
The Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum will hold a solo exhibition of Giorgio De Chirico, one of the leading masters of the 20th century who greatly influenced Surrealist painters such as Salvador Dali and René Magritte. The exhibition will feature over 80 works from around the world, including the iconic “metaphysical paintings,” covering approximately 70 years of Chirico’s painting career.
Venue: Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum
Schedule: April 27 - August 29
Trio: Modern Art Collections from Paris, Tokyo and Osaka (The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo)
The Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, and the Nakanoshima Museum of Art in Osaka have all built up rich collections of modern art as museums in major cities. This is an unprecedented and unique experiment in which works from the collections of the three museums are selected to form a series of trios. The exhibition will feature 34 trios of over 150 works, including paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, photographs, designs, and videos by 110 artists, presented in seven chapters according to themes and concepts to propose a new way of looking at modern art from the early 20th century to the present day.
Venue: The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo
Schedule: May 21 - August 25
https://www.momat.go.jp/en/exhibitions/558
Paul McCartney Photography Exhibition 1963-64: Eyes of the Storm (Roppongi Hills Tokyo City View)
An exhibition of Paul McCartney’s photographs is scheduled to open at Roppongi Hills Tokyo City View in July. The exhibition will feature approximately 250 photographs taken by McCartney between November 1963 and February 1964, when the Beatles became a social phenomenon, and rare and previously unseen photographs preserved on negatives and contact sheets for the past 60 years.
Venue: Roppongi Hills Tokyo City View
Schedule: July - September (TBC)
Takada Kenzo (Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery)
The first large-scale solo exhibition of Kenzo Takada, founder of the fashion brand KENZO, will open in July at the Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery. The exhibition will explore the evolution of Takada, who has been described as a “color magician” through costumes, design drawings, childhood sketches, and photographs. A solo exhibition by Kei Imazu will also open in the same space in January next year.
Venue: Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery
Schedule: July 6 - September 16
Keiichi Tanaami Retrospective (Tentative title) (The National Art Center, Tokyo)
The National Art Center, Tokyo, will hold the world’s first major retrospective exhibition by Japanese artist Keiichi Tanaami. The exhibition will focus on the theme of “memory,” a keyword that unravels Tanaami’s artistic practice spanning over half a century and attempts to uncover the entirety of his diverse oeuvre. In addition to new paintings, sculptures, and animations, the exhibition will showcase rare graphic design and illustration works from the late 1960s and early 1970s, as well as a series of colorful wooden sculptures from the 1980s and some of his earliest pop artworks recently discovered in his studio.
Venue: The National Art Center, Tokyo
Schedule: August 7 - November 11
https://nact.jp/english/exhibition_special/2024/keiichitanaami/
Showa Modern: The World of Umeki Itaya (Sen-Oku Hakukokan Museum Tokyo)
Showa-era mosaic artist Umeki Itaya is best known for creating the Old Nihon Gekijo (Japan Theater) entrance hall, among other works. An exhibition exploring his life and work will open in August at the Sen-Oku Hakukokan Museum Tokyo in Roppongi. The exhibition will feature exotic mosaics, beautiful ornamental boxes, and other decorative items created by Itaya.
Venue: Sen-Oku Hakukokan Museum Tokyo
Schedule: August 31 - September 29
https://sen-oku.or.jp/program/20240831_itayaumeki/
Tanaka Isson: Light and Soul (Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum)
The Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum will hold a large-scale retrospective exhibition of Tanaka Isson in September. Tanaka distanced himself from the mainstream art world and spent his later years on Amami Oshima Island, creating paintings of nature, flowers, and birds as his subjects. This exhibition is expected to reveal the true nature of Tanaka as a painter, composed of materials discovered through recent research.
Venue: Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum
Schedule: September 19 - December 1
https://isson2024.exhn.jp
Louise Bourgeois Exhibition (Mori Art Museum)
Louise Bourgeois is considered one of the most influential artists of the last century. In a career spanning seven decades, she has translated various emotional and psychological states through various materials, developing a heterogeneous body of work that combines psychological intensity with a high degree of formal invention. The Mori Art Museum will showcase a selection of Bourgeois paintings from all stages of the artist’s career for the first time in East Asia.
Venue: Mori Art Museum
Schedule: September 25 - January 19, 2025
Birds (National Museum of Nature and Science)
The National Museum of Nature and Science will hold an exhibition focusing solely on birds for the first time in the museum’s history. Based on the latest research in phylogeny, the exhibition will explore the wonders of birds through taxidermy specimens and materials that illustrate their high cognitive abilities.
Venue: National Museum of Nature and Science
Schedule: November 2 - February 24, 2025
Jam Session: The Ishibashi Foundation Collection × Mohri Yuko – On Physis (Artizon Museum)
The fifth annual Artizon Museum Jam Session will feature contemporary artist Yuko Mohri, who has also been selected to represent Japan at the Venice Biennale in 2024. Working primarily in installation and sculpture, Mohri opens up new avenues of perception for those present in the exhibition space. Her first major exhibition in Tokyo will feature new and recent works and works from the Ishibashi Foundation’s collection selected by the artist herself.
Venue: Artizon Museum
Schedule: November 2 - February 9, 2025
https://www.artizon.museum/en/exhibition/detail/581
Commemorative Reopening Exhibition: Toulouse-Lautrec & Sophie Calle (Tentative title) (Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum, Tokyo)
The Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum, Tokyo (MIMT), is scheduled to reopen in November after an extended closure for equipment replacement and building maintenance. The reopening exhibition will bring together posters of Toulouse-Lautrec and works by leading contemporary French artist Sophie Calle. It will be the first time that Calle’s new works will be shown anywhere in the world. Find more information in the news article.
Venue: Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum, Tokyo
Schedule: November 23 - January 26, 2025
Ryuichi Sakamoto Exhibition (Tentative title) (Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo)
The first comprehensive exhibition in Japan to focus entirely on large-scale installations by composer and artist Ryuichi Sakamoto is set to open at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo in December 2024. This exhibition will look back at Sakamoto’s pioneering, experimental creative artworks, including several of his most well-known past works, a new work for this particular occasion envisioned before his passing, and a chronicle of his artistic endeavors dynamically constructed in spaces in and around the museum building. Check the news article for more information.
Venue: Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo
Schedule: December 21 - March 30, 2025
SHARE