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Although I made a special study of Japan’s art museums, it remained long hidden even to me that Osaka has a modern art museum. I am not talking about the Osaka Municipal Museum of Art (this Tennoji Park museum is anyway in the first place dedicated to ancient art forms, although it hosts temporary modern exhibitions as the Nitten) or the National Museum of Art, Osaka (a national museum of modern and contemporary art, set up in 1977 in the Osaka Expo Park and since 2004 moved to a more convenient spot in the western part of Nakanoshima) - no, I am referring to the “Osaka City Museum of Modern Art.”

While Japanese museums are sometimes criticized as being beautiful buildings with not much inside, this is the opposite case: a collection without a building!

[Temporary premises of Osaka City Museum of Modern Art - above an Idemitsu gas station - Photo © Ad Blankestijn]

The first plan for a modern museum of art was made in 1983, when Osaka celebrated its centennial as a city. A committee was set up in 1988, and collecting started in the early 90s. The collection now has reached more than 3,000 works and contains many excellent pieces.

Among non-Japanese paintings, we have a spectacular nude by Modigliani, surrealist paintings by Magritte and Dali, and on a different note a black painting by Frank Stella. Among the sculpture collected is a masterpiece by the Cubist Duchamp-Villon.

Work by Japanese painters centers on Saeki Yuzo, who is famous for his melancholy paintings of dilapidated walls in the backstreets of Paris. Saeki was born in Osaka, but became a Parisian by heart - he twice lived in Paris, where he made his most representative work. Unfortunately, he died in 1928 in Paris at the young age of 30. The museum has collected 20 works by Saeki Yuzo.

Another famous Osaka painter in the collection, also with 20 works, is Yoshihara Jiro, an avant-gardist who founded the gutai movement in the mid-fifties - the most important art movement in post-war Japan that was based in the Kansai. Yoshihara himself is known for his “Zen circle” paintings. Also other Gutai members as Shiraga Kazuo are in the collection.

The Osaka City Museum of Modern Art (the name is still provisional) will have a building, and probably an impressive one - although no date is mentioned yet on its website - the proposed location apparently will be near the National Museum of Modern Art, in the western part of Nakanoshima (which will get more accessible after the Keihan line extends its services there from Yodoyabashi).

In the meantime, the collection is not completely hidden. The museum-to-be organizes three exhibitions a year with work from its holdings. Location is on Nagahoridori, close to the Shinsaibashi station on the Midosuji line (Idemitsu Nagahori Bldg 13F, 3-4-26 Minami-Senba, Chuo-ku, Osaka; 06-6208-9096; open 11:00-19:00, closed Wednesdays). These premises used to house the Osaka Annex of the Idemitsu Museum which has unfortunately closed down. The temporary museum is only open when there is an exhibition, which happens to be the case right now: if you are quick you can just catch the excellent Saeki Yuzo exhibition (”Saeki Yuzo and the Dream of Paris” - see review in the Japan Times) which runs until March 25.

[Suntory Museum, Osaka - Photo © Ad Blankestijn]

By chance, even more can be seen from this phantasmagoric collection in the National Museum of Art, Osaka, also until March 25. There the exhibition “Dream Museum, the Osaka Collections” is held, which brings together top pieces from the Osaka City Museum of Modern Art with work from the Suntory Museum in Tenpozan (which has a great poster collection) and the National Museum itself, which adds work by Cezanne, Picasso and Ernst.