The Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art is celebrating its 1st anniversary in 2021. The building’s three-year renovation project won a number of architecture and design awards and has been lauded in art and architecture journals as well as travel magazines. It has also become a popular film backdrop and its light-filled public spaces are attracting many visitors.
An advance reservation system initiated in response to COVID-19 remains in place as of this writing (November 2020). Additionally, the planned Andy Warhol exhibition, one of the highlights of the 2020 schedule, had to be postponed. Things got off to a good start, however, with the Hiroshi Sugimoto − Post Vitam inaugural exhibition installed at the new Higashiyama Cube wing for contemporary art.
Art critic Noi Sawaragi, known for incisive analysis of contemporary art, has been invited as curatorial supervisor for the exhibition Bubbles/Debris: Art of the Heisei Period 1989–2019 at Higashiyama Cube early next year. The exhibition focuses on the Heisei Period (1989–2019), a time of unprecedented disasters and economic stagnation in Japan. To explore the response of Japanese artists and art groups to the conditions of the Heisei Period, Sawaragi selected fourteen artists and art groups to exhibit. For more information and artist details, click here.
To commemorate the 1st anniversary in 2021, the Museum is presenting, after half a century, Kyoto female artist Shoen Uemura’s (1875-1949) retrospective exhibition. The comprehensive Kyoto Modern Architecture exhibition (provisional title), plus a walking Kyoto architecture tour, is also on the schedule. Café ENFUSE, coordinating with the revolving exhibition of seasonally themed artworks from the Museum’s collection, will be offering fresh sweets on the seasonal motifs.
Also planned is a solo exhibition by appropriation artist Yasumasa Morimura (1951 – ), active for over 35 years visualizing the intersection of personal identity and world history with portraits of himself as diverse figures irrespective of gender and race. THE Doraemon Exhibition KYOTO 2021, postponed due to COVID-19, will be presented in the summer of 2021 with works by contemporary artists themed on Doraemon, the character that has been delighting children for over 50 years. For the 2021 schedule and details, click here.
In 2021, the Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art will explore the interplay of tradition and innovation in Kyoto by introducing modern and contemporary fine art, anime, architecture, and many other art genres.
