Akita Prefectural Museum of Art Masakichi Hirano Collection

About

The Hirano Masakichi Collection at the Akita Museum of Art is built on the artworks gathered over many years by businessman and art collector Hirano Masakichi (1895–1989). To make the collection public, he established the Hirano Masakichi Art Foundation, and in May 1967 the Akita Prefectural Museum of Art opened to display it. In 2013 the museum relocated to a new building designed by Tadao Ando, structured around a triangular motif with a lounge overlooking a water garden. Hirano met the painter Tsuguharu Foujita (Léonard Foujita, 1886–1968) at the Nika Exhibition in Tokyo in the fall of 1934. In June 1936, after Foujita's wife Madeleine Lequeux died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage, Hirano commissioned a mural from Foujita in her memory. Foujita completed the large mural Events of Akita in 1937, measuring 3.65 by 20.5 meters, depicting the festivals and daily life of Akita's merchant district.