MoMa, Tokyo
As the country’s leading National Museum of Art in Japan, the MoMA, first opened its doors in 1952. Governed then by the Ministry of Education, the concept for the building was conceived by Kunio Maekawa. Since its debut, the museum has undergone two separate expansions to the delight — and fixation — of art lovers and architects alike. Yoshiro Taniguchi, the father of the designer responsible for the MoMA’s NYC expansion, pioneered the Tokyo location’s latest expansion, serving as a cross-cultural and global thread linking the two spaces together.
Inside, the MoMA carries collections that exhibit the most exemplary Japanese artists and their respective works, dating from the Mejii period all the way through present day. As an annex to the building sits the Crafts Gallery, which opened in 1910 and was originally the home of the Imperial Guards. The annex now serves as testament to the surviving architecture left behind by the Mejii period and also as an embodiment of a new age of art: crafts. Since its inception, the Gallery has taken in more than 428 “crafts” and showcased these works just steps away from the renown paintings the MoMA is known for.
