The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo was opened in March 1995 in Kiba Park, to the East of Tokyo, as a center for the systematic study, collection, preservation, and display of contemporary art, focusing primarily on postwar Japanese art but encompassing a wide range of subjects from both here and abroad. Before this, no single institute in Tokyo dealt comprehensively with contemporary art, and a need had long been felt to establish a facility to trace the various trends in the field. To this end, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government drew up plans during the 1980s to establish a museum whose role would be to introduce the rapidly changing trends in contemporary art worldwide. In achieving this, it took for its model the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, which, since its establishment in 1926, has played an essential role in providing an avenue for introducing the latest art forms they developed. The Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum’s activities center around exhibitions. Its collection of approximately 3,000 artworks and 58,000 rare book materials has been inherited by the Museum of Contemporary Art. It provides a valuable source of information on the history of various creative activities while presenting a comprehensive overview of the times.
