First Look: Ueshima Museum
Kankuro Ueshima shares his impressive collection of contemporary art.
Cover photo: Ueshima Museum basement floor featuring Misheck Masamvu, Oscar Murillo, Lauren Quin, and Annie Morris, Shibuya City, Tokyo, Japan (2024). Photo by Danny With Love.
Intro
I recently visited the new Ueshima Museum of Art in Shibuya, Tokyo. Opened in June, the former school building houses the contemporary collection of Japanese entrepreneur and investor Kankuro Ueshima (植島 幹九郎).
“I want to share art with people around the world,” says Ueshima. The inaugural show features some 70 pieces, representing about 10% of Ueshima’s growing collection. Exhibitions will be rotated every six to ten months.
The collection is broad and eclectic, spanning a variety of media, styles, and national origin. Represented artists include Louise Bourgeois, Olafur Eliasson, Tracey Emin, Dan Flavin, Katharina Grosse, Ryoji Ikeda (池田 亮司), Takashi Murakami (村上 隆), Kohei Nawa (名和 晃平), Gerhard Richter, Hiroshi Sugimoto (杉本 博司) and the international collective teamLab.
Future
“My focus is contemporary art, works made by living artists . . . I really want to know how those great artists look at the current environment and social situation right now, and from their observations, we try to get a glimpse of the future,” Ueshima tells Artnet.
Inspired by the concept of “self-investigation” — a virtue fostered by his alma mater, Shibuya Kyoiku Gakuen, which owns the building — the future Ueshima presents is compelling. The collection examines life through topics including spirituality, nostalgia, and death.
I had a Good Time All by Myself This Time, oil on canvas, by Makiko Kudo [工藤麻紀子] (2022). Photo by Danny With Love.
Highlights
Visitors are greeted by Kohei Nawa’s PixCell Deer. In his PixCell series, Nawa covers taxidermy in a layer of glass beads. Inspired by digital reproduction (pixels) and nature (cells), Nawa challenges our perceived reality in the internet age. Obscured to the eye, his creatures posses a mysterious and ethereal quality — perhaps what is most beautiful is unknowable.
Upstairs, I’m drawn to Makiko Kudo’s I had a Good Time All by Myself This Time. On canvas, Kudo summons childhood memories of her hometown in Hirosaki, Aomori. On a field of blue and green, she freely combines local architectural landmarks with birds she recalls from a sign in Hirosaki Park. Kudo compares her painting process to dreaming. “Things you see in reality, things you see in dreams, and things you feel are all mixed together randomly, so I think they’re made in a similar way,” she says.
Hung nearby is Aki Kondo’s Pain, Pain, Go Away, in which she paints two cherubic children embracing in clouds. Her style is simple, but dynamic and full of energy. It’s motivated by a relentless search for happiness. Kondo witnessed the Tohoku Earthquake in 2011 — the strongest earthquake in Japan’s recorded history — and lost her husband shortly after marriage in 2018. Persevering as a single mother, she explains, “I feel like I am being kept alive by my paintings.”
Other notable works include collaborations between the late artist Louise Bourgeois and Tracey Emin, as well as the late designer Virgil Abloh and Takashi Murakami.
Conclusion
Ueshima has amassed a truly impressive collection — I especially appreciate his focused effort to include women and non-Western artists. This may be Japan’s most comprehensive collection of contemporary art; there is something here for everyone to enjoy and it is a must visit for art lovers.
Access
The Ueshima Museum is located in Shibuya City, near Miyashita Park, about 10 minutes walking from Shibuya Station. It’s open everyday except Mondays, from 11:00 to 17:00 (5 PM). Tickets must be purchased online, credit card only. Adult entrance costs 1,500 yen (approx. 10 USD). Both photos and videos are permitted.
