Nagoya City Art Museum

About

Nagoya City Art Museum opened on April 22, 1988, standing within Shirakawa Park in an area known as the 'Arts and Science Woods.' Architect Kisho Kurokawa kept the building lower than the surrounding trees, sinking the permanent galleries and storage below ground, and built in a sunken garden so that daylight could still reach the underground spaces. The building is organized around a north-south main axis and a secondary axis opening to the northwest, weaving in Japanese traditional forms and local Nagoya motifs. The collection branches into four areas: local art from the Nagoya region, the École de Paris, the Mexican Renaissance, and postwar contemporary art. Works by surrealist painter Kansuke Yamamoto, Sean Scully, and Alexander Calder sit within it, where local roots and the currents of world art meet in a single space.