Idemitsu Art Museum

About

The Idemitsu Museum of Arts opened in 1966 on the ninth floor of the Imperial Theatre Building in Marunouchi, Tokyo, built around the collection of Idemitsu Sazo, founder of Idemitsu Kosan. The collection centers on Japanese and East Asian classical art, with a systematic focus on ceramics and calligraphy/painting, including more than 1,000 works of calligraphy and painting by the Zen monk Sengai Gibon. In 2019 the museum acquired 190 works from the Price Collection, including Ito Jakuchu's folding screen 'Birds, Animals and Flowering Plants' (Chōjū Kaboku-zu), painted using a grid technique called masume-gaki, in which roughly 40,000 tiny squares fill the entire surface. The Tokyo museum has been closed since December 2024 for the reconstruction of the building it occupies, and is expected to reopen in a new building around 2030. A separate branch in Moji-ku, Kitakyushu, was fully renovated in 2016 and continues to operate independently.