Hiroshima Prefectural Art Museum
Located next to the scenic Shukkeien Garden, the museum has a collection of over 5,200 pieces, including artworks related to Hiroshima Prefecture, Japanese and Asian crafts, and artworks from the 1920s and 1930s, such as Salvador Dali's Dream of Venus. The museum exhibits its collection, changing the exhibits generally four times a year.
Hiroshima Prefectural Art Museum Introduction Video
The museum opened in 1968 as the first public art museum in the Chugoku region and is located adjacent to the Shukkeien Garden, the Japanese garden of Daimyo (feudal lord) of Hiroshima, Asano Nagaakira. The museum facilities were reopened in 1996 after extensive reconstruction and continue to play a lead role in the artistic pursuits of the prefecture, while also allowing visitors to enjoy the delights of both the art collection and outdoor gardens on the same visit. The museum houses approximately 5,200 works of art and displays collected works in second-floor exhibition rooms, with each theme elaborately curated. In the Welcome Gallery within this exhibition space, you can listen to explanations of the displayed works using this audio guide. The third-floor Special Exhibition Room holds various innovative displays, including special exhibitions of high artistic value featuring domestic and international works, museum exclusive exhibitions focusing on outstanding local artists and even family-oriented summer holiday programs appealing to elementary and junior high school students. Please be sure to visit both of these exhibitions.
Main works
Colorful, vividly-patterned trappings decorate the solid, sturdy-looking bodies of these horses. Holding their eyes wide open and their bits between their teeth, these figures have a tense, nervous-looking expression. The skills of the ceramicists of Arita, in Saga Prefecture, are displayed to the full in these items, which represent the larger class of figurines created in the Kakiemon-style. Made in the late seventeenth century, the horses were first exported to Europe by the Dutch East India Company, before later being sent from France back to Japan. As there are currently only six known examples of this type of figurine in the world, the two horses displayed here are items of immense cultural value.
Since ancient times, Itsukushima has been an object of worship, called “Island of the Gods”, and was a famous spot mentioned in waka poems of the Heian period (794-1185). During the Edo period (1603-1867), the island was developed as a pleasure spot and was widely used as a subject for paintings, being one of the “Three Great Views of Japan” along with Amanohashidate in Kyoto and Matsushima in Miyagi Prefecture. This work depicts the southern face of Itsukushima, surrounded by the azure sea, pure white sandy beaches, and billowing golden clouds. The appearance of visitors to the shrine, which brings out the bustle and excitement of the recreation, can be seen on the approach to the shrine, in small boats on the Seto island sea. The scene of people taking off their clothes on the white sand and bathing in the sea water can be read as a custom of purification before entering the island.
- Salvador Dalí, The Dream of Venus, 1939, Hiroshima Prefectural Art Museum
- Kodama Kibō, Splashing Waterfall, 1931, Hiroshima Prefectural Art Museum
- Okuda Gensō, Autumn Forest and the Moon, 1977, Hiroshima Prefectural Art Museum
- Foliate Bowl with Floral Design in Kakiemon-style (Important Cultural Property), Hiroshima Prefectural Art Museum
- Kobayashi Senko, Milkmaid, 1897, Hiroshima Prefectural Art Museum
- Entsuba Katsuzō, Priests in the Moonlight Night, 1985, Hiroshima Prefectural Art Museum
- Hirayama Ikuo, The Holocaust at Hiroshima, 1979, Hiroshima Prefectural Art Museum
- Minami Kunzō, Sitting Woman, 1908, Hiroshima Prefectural Art Museum
