Espace Louis Vuitton Tokyo is an excellent contemporary art gallery housed in a large glass box that crowns LV’s flagship store on Omotesando. Located on the 7th floor and accessed via a discrete elevator, it’s a hidden-away gem that is worth seeking out. Ask the friendly staff to direct you up there. The gallery opened in…
Category: Galleries & Museums
Tokyo Midtown
Tokyo Midtown is a huge commercial and entertainment development in Roppongi that houses a large luxury shopping mall, office towers, hotels, museums and gardens. Opened in 2007, hot on the heels of Roppongi Hills, it helped clean up the Roppongi district’s reputation as a seedy nightlife district and reposition it as a high-end destination. The…
Museum of Contemporary Art
The Museum of Contemporary Art, located in Kiba Park in eastern Tokyo, is one of Japan’s largest contemporary art museums. It’s housed in a low-rise architecturally impressive structure that features lots of concrete, glass and geometric shapes. The museum completed a major renovation in 2019 to celebrate its 25th anniversary. The museum, or ‘MOT’ as it…
Roppongi Hills
Roppongi Hills is a massive commercial and entertainment precinct in Roppongi that opened in 2003. Centred around the 54-story Mori Tower office building, it’s multiple levels of plazas and buildings house shops, bars, restaurants, cinemas and gardens. The Grand Hyatt Hotel is part of the complex and directly connects to the shopping and dining precincts….
Ghibli Museum
If you’re a fan of the films of Japanese animation company Studio Ghibli, which include My Neighbour Totoro, Spirited Away and Ponyo, the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka will be the place for you. Sitting on the fringe of Inokashira Park, the museum is housed in a whimsical mansion with winding staircases and tiny doors and…
Yebisu Garden Place
Yebisu Garden Place is an expansive raised commercial and entertainment precinct. It’s connected to Ebisu Station via a series of travelators that carry you across the streets below and into a large paved plaza featuring a number of notable attractions. Built on the former site of the Yebisu brewery, which was established in 1890, the…
Taro Okamoto Memorial Museum
The Taro Okamoto Memorial Museum is housed in the former home and studio of it’s namesake in the backstreets of Aoyama. Okamoto rose to prominence in Japan in the 50’s and 60’s, famous for his abstract and surrealist paintings, photography and sculpture. Numerous examples of his public works are dotted around Tokyo, including a huge,…
Watari Museum of Contemporary Art (Watari-Um)
The Watari Museum of Contemporary Art, also known as ‘Watari-Um’, is a privately-owned art museum in Gaienmae, a short walk from Harajuku and Omotesando. Housed in an inventive Mario Botta building, the museum holds regular, intimate exhibitions by the big names of the contemporary art world. Yayoi Kusama, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Yoshitomo Nara, Larry Clark and…
Yayoi Kusama Museum
Yayoi Kusama is perhaps Japan’s most celebrated contemporary artist. Prominent in the art world since the 1960’s, she’s known for her use of polka dots, her pumpkin motif and the infinity mirror rooms that continue generating long line ups and sold out tickets around the world. In 2017 she opened her very own Yayoi Kusama…
Nezu Museum
The Nezu Museum, just beyond the top end of the Omotesando shopping strip, has something for everyone. Founded by a Japanese rail magnate, it houses his large private collection of Japanese and Asian art antiquities. But there’s a lot more to it than that. For architecture aficionados, there’s the beauty and simplicity of the Kengo…
The National Art Centre Tokyo
The National Art Centre Tokyo in Roppongi is one of the largest exhibition venues in Japan. It holds a rotating roster of temporary art and design exhibitions across the year in its 12 gallery spaces. Opened in 2007, the Kisho Kurokawa designed building is an architectural marvel, featuring an expansive facade of curvy glass walls. The…
Mori Art Museum
The Mori Art Museum is a vast contemporary art museum in the sky, sitting on the 53rd floor of the Mori Tower skyscraper in the Roppongi Hills commercial development. The museum, which celebrated its 15thanniversary in 2019, holds high quality, seasonal solo and group exhibitions. Most feature art by modern and contemporary Japanese and international…
teamLab Planets Tokyo
teamLab Planets Tokyo is a long-term pop-up exhibition by world-renowned Japanese digital art collective teamLab. Much of the exhibition is centred around water. Visitors are asked to roll up their pants and wade knee-deep in a few of the artworks. These include a walk up a long, dark ramp toward a waterfall. There’s also a…
Edo Tokyo Museum
The Edo Tokyo Museum in eastern Tokyo provides a comprehensive and entertaining look at the history of Tokyo. Its housed in a monolithic building by the Sumida River, that is a futuristic take on traditional Japanese warehouse design. In the museum’s comprehensive permanent exhibition, the history is brought to life through dioramas, miniature models and full-scale…
SCAI the Bathhouse
SCAI the Bathhouse is one of the most unique contemporary art galleries in Tokyo. Its point of difference is that its housed inside a 200-year-old building that was once a public bath. The building facade features traditional tiled Japanese roofing and the original water tower. There’s even the original wooden lockers from the public bath…
Fukagawa Edo Museum
Ever wondered what Tokyo was like in the 1800’s at the end of the Edo era? The Fukagawa Edo Museum in Kiyosumi-Shirakawa brings that period to life with a full-size reproduction of a Tokyo neighbourhood from that time. Entering the museum is like stepping into history, or at least onto the authentic set of a…
Spiral
Great architecture, art, food and shopping all under the one roof? You’ll find that at the Spiral building in Aoyama. Spiral has been a lifestyle destination since it was built in the 1980’s. It gets its name from a huge spiralling ramp within its atrium that takes visitors from an art gallery and café on…
21 21 Design Sight
21 21 Design Sight is a contemporary art and design museum in Roppongi with some big names behind it. The sleek concrete and steel building, which sits low in the park outside the Tokyo Midtown complex, was designed by Tadao Ando, one of Japan’s most prominent architects. Its directors include fashion designer Issey Miyake. 21…