If you have never visited the private museum Nihon no hanga and you have missed all those wonderful exhibitions of the past 10 years. But you can still take your chance. Collected and Shared offers the best of this charming museum. In eight thematic blocks, you will be given a glimpse into the world’s largest collection of 20th-century Japanese prints outside of Japan.
The most interesting themes are Discovering creativity and Collecting for the Museum. The first theme is interesting because of the enormous contrast and the variety of subjects. You would call the roughly printed A girl’s face by Onchi Koshiro almost abstract art compared to the very detailed prints of Beginning with beauties, the logical start of the exhibition. In this theme block a beautiful print of the café district of Shinjuku in beautiful dark threatening shades.
Collecting for the Museum contains four great prints with a classical theme in Japanese print art: rain. Japanese prints from this period show us how magnificent rain can be depicted. The rain almost always falls perpendicularly from the sky against a dark background that is subtly, realistic and expertly executed in different shades of black, blue and grey.
The surprising encore is on the highest exhibition space. A compact but very impressive collection of contemporary art by young Japanese artists from different disciplines. The exuberant work of Yuina Wada would fit into the kawaii section of the hugely popular exhibition Cool Japan(until 1 September in the Tropenmuseum Amsterdam; from 17 October in the Museum aan de Stroom in Antwerp). Ai Yamaguchi has painted ‘deceptively real’ cotton as if it were an image on a lacquer box.
Collected and Shared can still be viewed until 26 May 2019. Nihon no Hanga is opened on Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 12:00 to 16:00. Reservations are not required on the days that the museum is opened. To enter the museum, you must ring the bell. The address of Nihon no hanga is Keizersgracht 586 in Amsterdam.
Photography: Francisca Hagen
I do enjoy the photos, it gives a good idea of the museum.
Thank you for reading and your comment! I am glad that the photos did help you to give an idea. Hope you are able to visit the museum this weekend, if you are in the neighbourhood.
Thank you!