Fukushima Prefectural Art Museum

About

On the site once occupied by Fukushima University's economics department, at the foot of Mount Shinobu, the Fukushima Prefectural Museum of Art opened on July 22, 1984. Designed by the architectural office of Otaka Masato, the 9,680-square-meter building was later named one of Japan's "100 Best Public Buildings." The collection spans more than 1,600 works of painting, printmaking, sculpture, and crafts, weighted toward modern art and in particular twentieth-century American figurative painting. The prints of Kano Seiji, from Aizu-Sakashita, and the work of Sekine Shoji, born in Shirakawa, form a core of the holdings. The museum closed for over a month after the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 2011, and following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident some overseas lenders grew reluctant to send works there. Renovations from August 2020 to May 2021 reinforced the ceilings and upgraded elevators and lighting; as of April 2026, general and university admission rose to 360 yen (280 yen for groups), while visitors of high-school age and younger continue to enter free.