30th Anniversary Exhibit
Nine Profiles: 1935→2025

This year marks 30 years of the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo. The museum’s initial displays from the permanent collection, taken from a total of around 3500 items including works originally from the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, aimed primarily to present currents of contemporary art accessibly and from an international perspective, through carefully-curated selections of representative works with a particular focus on post-war Japanese avant-garde art.
Subsequent ongoing acquisitions then brought new, additional viewpoints, these currents branching off in various directions, and undergoing change. Since 2005, under the MOT Collection banner, permanent collection shows have taken a multifaceted approach to presenting the museum’s holdings, perhaps by focusing on an individual artist, or by comparing works in different media and from different eras, but with a single overarching theme.

To mark this milestone 30th anniversary, the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo presents “Nine Profiles: 1935→2025,” a survey of 90 years of art exhibited over nine rooms, each dedicated to a different ten-year period. Despite covering so many decades—just as the museum’s exhibitions did when it first opened—each room succeeds in revisiting the collection from multiple different perspectives. 1935 was chosen as the starting point due to the acquisition over time of a considerable number of works from the prewar and wartime periods, allowing links with postwar art to be identified; while the explicit naming of the year 2025 as the end point indicates that this is a view of the collection as it is right here, right now.

The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo collection currently stands at around 6,000 items, and is also far more diverse than it was 30 years ago. Constantly being updated, it will duly pass to the next generation incomplete, but various profiles emerge depending on where we focus, and how those features are presented. We hope “Nine Profiles: 1935→2025” will encourage visitors to take a fresh look at the art of our era, and ponder how the past has brought us to where we are now.

*Please be informed that the contents of the exhibit may be subject to change.

Artists

AOYAMA Satoru, ASAI Yusuke, ARAKAWA Shusaku, O JUN, OKAMOTO Shinjiro, Junya KATAOKA + Rie IWATAKE, KOIZUMI Meiro, KATSURA Yuki, KAZAMA Sachiko, KIKUHATA Mokuma, KUSAMA Yayoi, KUBOTA Shigeko, KUDO Tetsumi, SHINOHARA Ushio, SHINKAI Kakuo, SUGIMOTO Hiroshi, SUGAI Kumi, TAKAMATSU Jiro, TATSUNO Toeko, TANAKA Atsuko, TSURUOKA Masao, TOYOSHIMA Yasuko, TONEYAMA Kojin, NAKAMURA Hiroshi, MUKAI Junkichi, YAMASHITA Kikuji, YOKOO Tadanori, WADA Sanzo, LEE Ufan, Simon FUJIWARA, Wendelien van Oldenborgh, and others.

Exhibition Highlights

・90 years of contemporary art laid out across nine rooms, extending from the 1st to the 3rd floor
Starting from 1935, the exhibition will trace 90 years of art through nine rooms separated by decades. By selecting and exhibiting works created during each decade based on certain perspectives, we are not only revealing aspects of each era of art, but also attempting to draw out profiles that call to mind characteristics of our collection. Rather than listing art trends in full chronological order as in textbooks, the exhibition will be made up of multiple, multifaceted perspectives derived from the works.

・Exhibition of works representative of the MOT Collection
Starting with approx. 3,500 pieces when the museum first opened, today our collection holds approx. 6,000 pieces. For this exhibition period, works from the prewar and wartime periods, as well as recently acquired works that have formed our continually developing collection over the last 30 years will be displayed alongside the MOT Collection’s representative works.
ーTSURUOKA Masao, KIKUHATA Mokuma, TAKAMATSU Jiro, KUSAMA Yayoi and TATSUNO Toekoー

・Introduction of newly acquired works
Works recently acquired in the occasion of solo exhibitions held at the museum will be exhibited for the first time. This will include works by KUBOTA Shigeko (solo exhibition in 2021) and Wendelien van Oldenborgh (solo exhibition in 2022), both to be shown for the first time since their acquisition. We will also introduce works by AOYAMA Satoru, Junya KATAOKA + Rie IWATAKE, and other artists and works newly added to the collection in recent years.