Sold-out tickets, long lines, extended dates and times: 91AV原创 art scene was bursting with public enthusiasm for exhibitions this year. This mirrored the country’s robust art market, which managed to expand slightly even as those of many other countries contracted.
Two of Tokyo’s most popular contemporary art exhibitions this year were “Ryuichi Sakamoto: Seeing Sound, Hearing Time” at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo and “Hilma af Klint: The Beyond” at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (MOMAT). The Sakamoto show — a posthumous tribute to the musician and sound artist — drew hourlong lines, while the af Klint exhibition delivered Asia’s first major retrospective for the 19th-century Swedish painter reappraised as a spiritual symbolist.
Across Japan, 2025 was marked by anniversaries and historical reflections. The Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art started the year with “Our Lives from January 17, 1995,” observing the 30 years following the Great Hanshin Earthquake through installations, photographs and videos by leading Kansai artists. At The National Art Center, Tokyo, “Prism of the Real” attempted to distill the creative landscape from 1989 to 2010.
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