Taguchi Collection Exhibition at the Nariwa Museum of Art
November 11, 2025
By Kyoko Sato
Installation view, “Taguchi Art Collection Vol. II: Your Compass in the ‘Incredible’ Contemporary Art World – #MoreTagukore,” Takahashi City Nariwa Museum of Art, Japan, 2025, Photo by Kenji Aoki, Courtesy of Taguchi Art Collection
Center: Kohei Nawa, PixCell-Deer#51, 2018, Mixed media
A Leading Contemporary Art Collection of Japan
The Taguchi Art Collection is one of Japan’s representative contemporary art collections. From its approximately 750 works, 39 pieces are being featured in the exhibition Taguchi Art Collection Vol. II: Your Compass in the ‘Incredible’ Contemporary Art World – #MoreTagukore, which opened on September 20, 2025 at the Nariwa Museum of Art in Takahashi City, Okayama Prefecture. This marks the second exhibition of the collection at the Nariwa Museum, following the one held in 2023.
A defining characteristic of the collection is its broad acquisition of contemporary artworks created around the world since the 1980s, including in the United States, Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa.¹ The collection encompasses diverse materials and forms such as sculpture, photography, video, and installation, offering a panoramic view of contemporary art movements across eras and regions.
The collection was initially developed under the direction of its founder, Hiroshi Taguchi (b. 1937), with a particular focus on American Pop Art and internationally related works. Later, with the involvement of his daughter, Miwa Taguchi, the scope expanded further, strengthening an interest in art addressing pressing issues in contemporary society such as poverty, discrimination, gender, and violence.²
While the world is home to many remarkable private art collections, the essential appeal of the Taguchi Art Collection lies in its public-minded philosophy rooted in the desire to “share artworks with as many people as possible.” This exhibition highlights how such a philosophy represents a new value in contemporary art collecting today.
The Nariwa Museum of Art was founded in honor of Torajirō Kojima (1881–1929), and the museum’s origins in art collecting a century ago resonate profoundly with the efforts of Hiroshi and Miwa Taguchi today. Their spirit of collecting art for the public and opening it to society stands out anew as an important “legacy of public good” within Japan’s contemporary art scene.
Kojima Torajirō and Hiroshi Taguchi: Art for the Public
The Nariwa Museum of Art in Takahashi City, Okayama Prefecture, was founded in 1953 (Shōwa 28) as the first town-run art museum in Okayama, in honor of Takahashi-born Impressionist painter Torajirō Kojima.
Not only was Kojima a painter who made significant contributions to the development of modern Western-style painting in Japan, but he also a pioneering collector in the Japanese art world. He traveled to Europe three times, and during those periods, with the support of industrialist Magosaburō Ōhara (1880–1943) from Kurashiki, Okayama, he acquired numerous masterworks at the forefront of Western art and brought them back to Japan. These works later became the foundation of the Ōhara Museum of Art (Kurashiki, Okayama) and defined its role as Japan’s first private museum dedicated to Western art.
Among these works, El Greco’s Annunciation (1590–1603), Claude Monet’s Waterlilies (c. 1906), and Léon Frédéric’s monumental All Things Return to Death, Yet Through God’s Love All Shall Be Revived (1893–1918) are representative examples.
Kojima’s visionary eye was evident from his first visit to Europe. He did not simply collect excellent paintings; he acted with a clear vision of raising Japan’s art world to an international standard.
The first work acquired for the Ōhara Museum of Art—Japan’s first modern art museum, established in 1930 (Shōwa 5)—was Edmond Aman-Jean’s Hair (c.1912). In a letter written during his first period of study abroad in 1912 (Meiji 45), Kojima asked Magosaburō Ōhara to purchase the work as a reference for the Japanese art world, which at the time had limited access to Western art. This indicates that he already had the idea of founding a museum at that stage.³
Hiroshi Taguchi (born 1937, Shōwa 12), on the other hand, is an entrepreneur who founded MISUMI Group Inc., a specialist trading company for FA and mold components, in 1963 (Shōwa 38), and he is also an avid collector of contemporary art. The first work he acquired was Keith Haring’s Growing I (1987). In an interview with the web magazine Museo Square, he recalled the moment as follows:
“When I thought of art, I imagined Renaissance or Impressionist works. But one day, I happened to see a Keith Haring poster at a boutique and was shocked — ‘What on earth is this!’
Around that time, MISUMI had just built a new headquarters in Toyocho, and I thought: I want everyone to see this. I’ll buy it and display it. I wanted to create an environment where you feel like you’re working inside a museum.”⁴
As this episode shows, the starting point of Taguchi’s collecting was not personal ownership but a public-minded desire to “share the works with as many people as possible.”
Kojima collected art “for the Japanese art world.”
Taguchi acquired works “to share them with everyone.”
In both cases, the underlying philosophy was not to keep the works for themselves, but to open them as assets for the public.
The Dynamics of Curation
This exhibition has been organized by the curatorial team led by Director Kazushi Sawahara, resulting in a superb presentation that organically integrates the philosophy of the Nariwa Museum, the context of Japanese art, harmony with the architecture by Tadao Ando, and currents in global contemporary art.
One of the highlights responds to the anecdote that Torajirō Kojima visited Claude Monet in 1920 and purchased Waterlilies directly for 20,000 francs.⁵ Covering the Land with a New Mist—a monumental 950-inch-wide (24-meter) painting by Janaina Tschäpe (b. 1973, Brazil), who works from a studio in New York—was created in 2024 and inspired by her participation in a program at the Musée de l’Orangerie in France from 2020 to 2021, in which she dialogued with Monet’s Waterlilies. It is a symbolic work that connects past and present, Europe and Japan, and the global art world.
The exhibition opens with Japanese contemporary art. Works by distinctive artists such as Yoshitomo Nara, Hiroshi Sugito, Izumi Kato, Keiichi Tanaami, Tomoko Sawada, and Makoto Aida welcome visitors. Among them, Aida’s Ash Color Mountains (2011), a large-scale work depicting toppled gray office workers heaped like a mountain, symbolically reflects the structures and psychological landscape of contemporary Japanese society.
Furthermore, sculptures and Lawrence Weiner’s text work enter into dialogue with Tadao Ando’s architecture. Kohei Nawa’s PixCell-Deer#51—an iconic presence in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Japanese Gallery in New York—is placed next to the “Still Water Garden,” where water lilies that were transplanted from Monet’s garden in Giverny in 2000 float on the surface, its spherical beads reflecting and gazing back at us.
Lawrence Weiner, HERE FOR A TIME THERE FOR A TIME & SOMEWHERE FOR A TIME, 2014, language + acrylic film, 9×82.6 ft. | 2.7651×25.2 m
Lawrence Weiner’s (1942–2021, U.S.) text work is installed on a large concrete wall in the first-floor lobby. HERE FOR A TIME THERE FOR A TIME & SOMEWHERE FOR A TIME, written in both English and Japanese, rises powerfully, bringing the energy of New York into the mountains of Okayama.
The exhibition also introduces contemporary African art, now firmly in the mainstream. Through works by artists with diverse cultural backgrounds—such as Zanele Muholi (b. 1972, South Africa), Seydou Keïta (1921–2001, Mali), and Yinka Shonibare CBE RA (b. 1962, U.K.)—visitors encounter the leading edge of global contemporary art.
The Public Nature of Art
A hundred years ago, Torajirō Kojima traveled through Europe, acquiring artworks and opening the door to the global art world for Japan. Today, Hiroshi and Miwa Taguchi continue this legacy by collecting contemporary art and actively making it accessible to as many people as possible.
Across generations and eras, their collecting practices share a common philosophy: artworks are not meant to be confined as private possessions, but shared as public cultural assets. Outstanding artworks gain value not only through their creation, but by leaving the hands of their makers, taking on lives of their own, and continuing to speak through the hearts of those who encounter them.
Set within the unique architecture of the Nariwa Museum, this exhibition becomes a place where Kojima’s foresight, the Taguchi Collection’s contemporary vision, and the global art world converge. Visitors are invited not only to appreciate the works before them, but also to feel the spirit of public-mindedness behind them—an unbroken chain of artistic life that transcends time.
Art does not belong to a select few. It gains its true meaning when each of us receives it, reflects on it, speaks about it, and passes it to the next generation. The path illuminated by Kojima and Taguchi stands as an essential compass for us today.
Eagle Industry Special Exhibition
Taguchi Art Collection Vol. II: Your Compass in the ‘Incredible’ Contemporary Art World – #MoreTagukore
September 20, 2025 (Sat) – January 18, 2026 (Sun)
Takahashi City Nariwa Museum of Art
1068-3 Shimohara, Nariwa-chō, Takahashi City, Okayama
https://nariwa-museum.jp/
References
(1) https://mmag.pref.gunma.jp/exhibition/exhibition-649
(2) https://bijutsutecho.com/magazine/news/report/26702
(3) Torajiro Kojima and Takahashi City Nariwa Museum of Art, edited by Nariwa Museum, Okayama Bunko, 2019, p.27
(4) https://muuseo.com/square/articles/980
(5) Torajiro Kojima and Takahashi City Nariwa Museum of Art, edited by Nariwa Museum, Okayama Bunko, 2019, p.28