Tōkyō-to Bijutsukan

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. 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.