The National Museum of Western Art (Japanese: 国立西洋美術館), also known as NMWA, is a museum in Tokyo dedicated to European and (to a lesser extent) American art, housed in a building designed by Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, better known as Le Corbusier; it is one of the only four museums built after a design by the famous Swiss-French architect.
Above, an exterior view of the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo, designed by Le Corbusier; photo by Kakidai (CC BY-SA 4.0)
History and architecture
The museum was founded in 1959 by Japanese art collector and businessman Matsukata Kojiro (1865-1950) to publicly display his large collection of paintings and sculptures, mostly French.
Matsukata commissioned Le Corbusier to design the museum in 1955. The architect designed a three-story (two over the ground plus an underground storage level) building, primarily made of reinforced concrete.
Raised over thin columns (known in French as pilotis), the building has a total gross floor area of 17,369 square meters / 187,000 square feet and houses permanent and temporary exhibition galleries, a small auditorium, a restaurant, and a shop. Located in Tokyo’s Ueno Park, the NMWA was inaugurated on June 20, 1959.
Le Corbusier’s building is based on a square module of 6 by 6 meters with a full-height hall in the center surrounded by an interrupted sequence of exhibition spaces on the second and third floors, while the ground floor contains the main lobby, visitor facilities, and offices for the staff. This design is an evolution of the conceptual Museum of Unlimited Growth, which the Swiss-French architect had developed in the early 1930s.
The National Museum of Western Art was enlarged in 1979 with an expansion by Japanese architect Kunio Maekawa, who had previously collaborated with Le Corbusier on the original building’s design.
Le Corbusier, Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, plan of the second floor.
NMWA, photo by Kakidai (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Photo Xiquinho Silva (CC BY 2.0)
The museum’s lobby; photo by Xiquinho Silva (CC BY 2.0)
Two images of the gallery space of the National Museum of Western Art; photos Vince Lam (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Collection and activities
The museum’s permanent collection, which includes both pieces that were part of Matsukata’s collection and works acquired later by the NMWA, spans seven centuries, from the 14th to the 20th century. Works on view include paintings, drawings, and sculptures by artists such as Lucas Cranach the Elder, Paolo Veronese, Tintoretto, Jan Brueghel the Elder, Guido Reni, Peter Paul Rubens, Jusepe de Ribera, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Johann Heinrich Fussli, Eugene Delacroix, Gustave Courbet, Edouard Manet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet (including one of his Water Lilies), Auguste Rodin, Aristide Maillol, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Max Ernst, Jackson Pollock, Fernand Leger, Joan Miro, and Jean Dubuffet, among others.
The National Museum of Western Art also organizes temporary exhibitions, lectures, talks, concerts, and family programs.
Claude Monet, Water Lilies, 1916, oil on canvas; image Lluís Ribes Mateu (CC BY-NC 2.0)