The Hara Museum of Contemporary Art is one of the oldest museums of contemporary art

Contemporary art

Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced...

 in Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

. The museum is in The Roppongi

Roppongi

is a district of Minato, Tokyo, Japan, famous as home to the rich Roppongi Hills area and an active night club scene. Many foreign embassies are located in Roppongi, and the night life is popular with locals and foreigners alike...

 district, in the Akasaka

Akasaka, Tokyo

is a residential and commercial district of Minato, Tokyo, located west of the government center in Nagatachō and north of the Roppongi nightlife district....

 area of Tokyo

Tokyo

, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...

. It's street address is: 4-7-25 Kitashinagawa, Tokyo 140-0001.

The building was originally built as a private home. It was designed by Jin Watanabe and completed in 1938, making it a rare example of early Shōwa period

Showa period

The , or Shōwa era, is the period of Japanese history corresponding to the reign of the Shōwa Emperor, Hirohito, from December 25, 1926 through January 7, 1989.The Shōwa period was longer than the reign of any previous Japanese emperor...

 architecture. In 1979, it was converted to a museum. It underwent a major renovation in 2008, including a new lighting system designed by Shozo Toyohisa.

The museums permanent collection includes works by Karel Appel

Karel Appel

Christiaan Karel Appel was a Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet. He started painting at the age of fourteen and studied at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam in the 1940s...

, Alexander Calder

Alexander Calder

Alexander Calder was an American sculptor and artist most famous for inventing mobile sculptures. In addition to mobile and stable sculpture, Alexander Calder also created paintings, lithographs, toys, tapestry, jewelry and household objects.-Childhood:Alexander "Sandy" Calder was born in Lawnton,...

, Buckminster Fuller

Buckminster Fuller

Richard Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller was an American systems theorist, author, designer, inventor, futurist and second president of Mensa International, the high IQ society....

, Yves Klein

Yves Klein

Yves Klein was a French artist considered an important figure in post-war European art. He is the leading member of the French artistic movement of Nouveau réalisme founded in 1960 by the art critic Pierre Restany...

, Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama

is a Japanese artist whose paintings, collages, soft sculptures, performance art and environmental installations all share an obsession with repetition, pattern, and accumulation...

, Surasi Kusolwong, Aiko Miyawaki, Yasumasa Morimura

Yasumasa Morimura

Yasumasa Morimura is a Japanese appropriation artist. He was born in Osaka and graduated from Kyoto City University of Arts in 1978...

, Daisuke Nakayama, Maruyama Ōkyo

Maruyama Okyo

, born Maruyama Masataka, was a Japanese artist active in the late 18th century. He moved to Kyoto, during which he studied artworks from Chinese, Japanese and Western sources. A personal style of Western naturalism mixed with Eastern decorative design emerged, and Ōkyo founded the Maruyama school...

, Jackson Pollock

Jackson Pollock

Paul Jackson Pollock , known as Jackson Pollock, was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, and...

, George Rickey

George Rickey

George Rickey was an American kinetic sculptor.Rickey was born on June 6, 1907 in South Bend, Indiana.-Life and work:...

, Mark Rothko

Mark Rothko

Mark Rothko, born Marcus Rothkowitz , was a Russian-born American painter. He is classified as an abstract expressionist, although he himself rejected this label, and even resisted classification as an "abstract painter".- Childhood :Mark Rothko was born in Dvinsk, Vitebsk Province, Russian...

, Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman is an American photographer and film director, best known for her conceptual portraits. Sherman currently lives and works in New York City. In 1995, she was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. She is represented by Sprüth Magers Berlin London in and Metro Pictures gallery in...

, Hiroshi Sugimoto

Hiroshi Sugimoto

Hiroshi Sugimoto , born on February 23, 1948, is a Japanese photographer currently dividing his time between Tokyo, Japan and New York City, USA. His catalog is made up of a number of series, each having a distinct theme and similar attributes.-Life and works:Hiroshi Sugimoto was born and raised in...

, Jason Teraoka

Jason Teraoka

Jason Jun Teraoka is a figurative painter who was born in Kapaʻa, Hawaiʻi. He is a 4th generation Japanese-American who lives and works in Honolulu, and is largely self-taught...

, Zhou Tiehai

Zhou Tiehai

Zhou Tiehai is a contemporary Chinese artist whose art work attempts to satirize much of modern Chinese art. Zhou does not paint his own works, though he earned an arts degree from the School of Fine Arts at Shanghai University in 1989...

, Lee U-Fan

Lee U-Fan

Lee U-Fan is a Korean. minimalist painter and sculptor and leader of the Japanese material school Monoha in the late 1960s. Lee advocated a methodology of de-westernization and demodernization in both theory and practice as an antidote to the Eurocentric thought of 1960s postwar Japanese society...

, Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol

Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...

, and Miwa Yanagi

Miwa Yanagi

is a Japanese photographic artist.-Life and works:Miwa Yanagi was born in 1967 Kobe City, Japan. She completed her postgraduate course work at the Kyoto City University of Arts . Miwa Yanagi is known mainly as a photographer and video artist. Miwa Yanagi creates an elaborate, thoroughly thought...

.