A values-driven collection of contemporary brilliance
Opened in 2024, the Ueshima Museum is a private art space in Tokyo, Japan owned by the businessman Kankuro Ueshima. Located on the grounds of the Shibuya Kyoiku Gakuen school that Ueshima attended, the six-story building was formerly the British School in Tokyo, which was established in 1988. Now renovated as an art space, it’s dedicated to “contemporaneity” and houses Ueshima’s growing collection of more than 650 international contemporary works dating mostly from between the 1990s and today. Ueshima, who began collecting in 2016 and bought 500 pieces in 2022 alone, focuses his acquisitions on living artists who respond to current environmental and social issues. The collection includes many blue-chip artists, such as Adrian Ghenie, Damien Hirst and Louise Bourgeois, and numerous Japanese artists, such as Yoko Matsumoto, Kazuki Umezawa and Chiharu Shiota.
Photo: Olafur Eliasson, "Eye see you," 2006. Courtesy Ueshima Museum.