Museums

Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art to Close from March; Options for Downsizing or Shutting Down Being Weighed

Courtesy of the Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art
The Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art

The Yomiuri Shimbun

17:00 JST, October 6, 2024

The Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art, known for its collection of 20th century art, will close from late March 2025, according to a decision by its owner company DIC Corp. in a board meeting.

The Tokyo-based chemical manufacturer opened the museum in Sakura, Chiba Prefecture, in 1990 as a societal contribution. The museum has a collection of 754 works of art, mainly by modern artists such as Marc Chagall, Frank Stella and others. The company owns 384 of these works, the land and the building. The room filled with Mark Rothko’s paintings, called The Rothko Room, is especially popular.

At the same time, DIC has operated at a loss partly due to the museum’s location of being far from central Tokyo.

A committee was established in April with four outside directors who discussed ways to manage the museum, which they said has not been used well from the standpoint of capital efficiency.

As a result, the committee advised the museum’s board members to consider either downsizing and relocating to Tokyo or discontinuing operations.

The board will consider the possibility of downsizing and relocation without ruling out the possibility of completely closing down, with hopes of reaching a conclusion by the end of the year.

In consideration of possibly selling its holdings, with a total book value of ¥11.2 billion as of the end of June, the board disclosed a list of major artworks.

To quickly implement its decision, the museum will close after the current exhibition “Katsuhito Nishikawa: Serenity in Stillness,” which runs through Jan. 26 next year. The specific date will be announced on the website as soon as it is determined.

Other examples of museum closures include the Vangi Sculpture Garden Museum in Nagaizumi, Shizuoka Prefecture, which closed last autumn after the COVID-19 pandemic caused a sharp decline in the number of visitors, and the Murauchi Art Museum in Hachioji, Tokyo, which gave away nearly half of its collection and was remodeled in 2013.