The First Museum of 1926
Okada Shinichiro (1883 to 1932) · 1926, demolished 1975
The museum you are standing in replaced an earlier one on the same site, and old photographs of it hang in the archive displays and appear on the centenary panels. The Tokyo Prefectural Art Museum of 1926 was a handsome two storey building in a restrained Western classical style, with a symmetrical facade, arched windows and a formal entrance facing the park. It was designed by Okada Shinichiro, an architect known for theatres and public buildings, and it was the first museum in Japan built by a public body for the display of art.
The money came from Sato Keitaro, a coal mining magnate from Kyushu, who gave one million yen, an enormous sum at the time, because he felt that Tokyo, unlike Paris or London, had no place where artists could show their work. From the start the building had no collection of its own. It was a rental exhibition hall, home to the annual government salon and to the exhibitions of the great artist associations, and critics grumbled about that almost immediately. Yet that model shaped the museum's whole identity, and it survives today in the public entry exhibitions that still fill the galleries every autumn.
By the 1960s the old building was cramped, poorly lit and crumbling, and after long debate it was demolished in 1975 to make way for Maekawa's design. A few fragments and fittings were preserved, and the museum's archives keep the drawings and the visitor records that document the thousands of shows held there, including the exhibitions of the early avant-garde where Japanese modernism was first seen in public. Knowing that story makes the present building read differently: not a break with the past but a second act on the same stage.
Did You Know? The founder Sato Keitaro never saw a collection installed in his museum, and in a sense his wish for a pure exhibition hall has been honoured for a century.
Unlock the Full Guide
Read every room and listen to every work in all museums with premium.