Akita Prefectural Museum of Art

photo by 掬茶 · CC BY-SA 3.0

photo by 掬茶 · CC BY-SA 4.0

In Andō Tadao's hall there is a 20-metre-long painting by Foujita: ‘The Events of Akita’.

The museum, designed by the architect Andō Tadao (Pritzker Prize 1995, the highest international award for architecture), echoes in triangles the pointed roof of the building it replaces, and looks out onto the moat of Senshū Park: from the viewing room the museum's artificial pond seems to continue into the water of the castle moat. In the large gallery hangs ‘The Events of Akita’ (秋田の行事), the mural more than 20 metres long painted in the thirties by Fujita Tsuguharu, the Japanese painter who became a naturalised French citizen, known in the West as Léonard Foujita.

Opened in 2013 to a design by Andō Tadao, the museum holds the collection of the Hirano Masakichi Art Foundation; Hirano Masakichi was the merchant who commissioned Fujita Tsuguharu to paint the great mural ‘The Events of Akita’. The building replaces the previous museum, whose triangular roof it takes up as an architectural motif.

ℹ️ Open 10:00–18:00. Admission to the permanent collection ¥310 for adults, ¥280 for university students, free up to high school. 10 minutes’ walk from JR Akita Station.

🚉 Akita · 11 min walk

Sources: akita-museum-of-art.jp · museum.or.jp

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