Past ExhibitionsExhibition
Prints and Drawings Gallery
New Print Acquisitions New Print Acquisitions

Dates

Saturday, 9 April 2022 – Sunday, 22 May 2022

Hours

9:30 am – 5:30 pm
Fridays, Saturdays 9:30 am – 8:00 pm
Admission ends 30 mins. before closing time

Closed

Mondays (except 2 May)

Venue

Prints and Drawings Gallery, New Wing

Admission Fees

Adults 500 yen (400 yen), College students 250 yen (200 yen)

• * Admission is free for Permanent Collection ticket holders.
• * Numbers in parentheses indicate discount fees for groups of 20 or more.
• * Free for high school students, under 18, and seniors (65 and over), Campus Members. Please show your ID upon entrance.
• * Disabled visitors admitted free of charge, with one attendant.Please present your disability identification upon arrival.
• * 18 May (Wed.) -- Free admission to the Main Building and Permanent Collection Galleries for International Museum Day.

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Organized by

The National Museum of Western Art

With the sponsorship of

Nippon BS Broadcasting Corporation

With the cooperation of

The Western Art Foundation

brochure

PDF file 593KB

The Matsukata Collection, destined to become the foundation collection of the National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, is known to have originally included a vast number of prints. However, when it came back to Japan, donated by the French government for the museum’s opening in 1959, the collection contained no more than twenty-six prints, including works by Auguste Rodin and Charles Cottet.

Thus, for some time, the museum’s print collection consisted of a small group of works centering on French modern art—until the appointment as director of Chisaburo Yamada in 1968 brought about several fundamental reforms. By widening the acquisition program to include new historical periods and geographical areas, he transformed the museum from one focused on French modern art to one showcasing a broad range of European art from the Middle Ages to the modern era. The subsequent appointments of Seiro Maekawa, a print expert and leading authority on Albrecht Dürer, as vice-director in 1980 and director in 1982 led to the further enrichment of the museum’s print collection.

Since then, through a steady stream of purchases and numerous donations from benefactors, the museum’s print collection has been built up to about 4,500 items, including deposits, as of April 2022. In recent years, the museum has sought to acquire works from the mainstream of Western print art history, while also expanding its collecting program to target peripheral domains.

The present exhibition, consisting of works acquired since 2015, is a product of these efforts. The exhibits, grouped by period and place, are arranged so visitors can savor various types of print expression from the late fifteenth to the early twentieth centuries. Works from the premodern eras include examples from the Old Masters—Dürer, Rembrandt, and others—which have long formed the core of our collection, as well as some rather different items such as a set of design plates and an anamorphosis. The modern prints in the exhibition, comprising works by Van Gogh, Manet, and other works associated with Romanticism, Symbolism, and japonisme, represent a selection of the many important pieces from the era recently acquired by the museum. Plans are also being made to introduce to the public many more items, not included here, in the near future. We wish to put on record our sincere appreciation to the Matsukata and the Hayakawa families whose donated pieces are among those on show. We also take the opportunity to express again our profound gratitude to all who have supported the museum’s program of print acquisition to this day.

Exhibition Checklist (PDF file, about 2.26MB)

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