MUSEUM OF WESTERN ART, History

Hi, my name’s Marcy, and I’m your personal guide. Along with MyWoWo, I’d like to welcome you to one of the Wonders of the World: the National Museum of Western Art.

The National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo is one of the few museums in Asia where you can admire masterpieces of Western painting and sculpture.

The museum has a very unusual history. It was founded in April 1959 to display a private collection belonging to Kojiro Matsukata, the third child of a former Japanese prime minister.

Kojiro Matsukata was the chairman of the shipbuilding company Kawasaki Dockyard. He had started collecting artworks in London during the First World War. Having made a fortune from his activity, from 1916 onwards he purchased a huge number of works, reaching the impressive figure of 10,000 pieces, as well as some 8000 Japanese prints purchased from the Parisian jeweler Henri Véver, which are now in the Tokyo National Museum....