Must-Visit Places on a Japan Trip: Why World-Famous Masterpieces Are Gathering at Tokyo Art Museums | Professor Jeon Won-kyung

Summary

Professor Jeon Won-kyung of Sejong Cyber University explains why Tokyo has become Asia's strongest city for Western art, tracing the long exchange between Dutch trade at Dejima, ukiyo-e printmakers, and the French Impressionists who collected and copied Japanese prints. The episode walks through Impressionist and modern masterpieces held by the National Museum of Western Art, the Artizon Museum, and the Pola Museum of Art. It also previews a rare one-month window in November when Louvre, Orsay, Tate, and Cincinnati museum exhibitions all overlap in Tokyo, and promotes an eight-museum Tokyo and Hakone art tour.

• Tokyo offers one of Asia's best Western art collections, especially Impressionist works, only about two hours by plane from Korea.
• Ukiyo-e prints and Impressionism influenced each other through Dutch trade at Dejima and the later Japonisme boom in Europe.
• Works by Monet, Manet, Morisot, Renoir, Cezanne, Caillebotte, Cassatt, Matisse, and Rousseau are reviewed in detail.
• A rare November overlap of Louvre, Orsay, Tate, and Cincinnati Museum of Art exhibitions is highlighted as a one-month opportunity.
• Ueno Park alone concentrates three venues showing major special exhibitions at the same time.
• The Pola Museum of Art in Hakone will display all 19 of its Monet paintings during the Monet centennial year.
• The program promotes a three-night, four-day Art and the City tour covering eight museums in Tokyo and Hakone.