RECENTLY CLOSED EXHIBITION
Installation view, Chiharu Shiota: Two Home Countries
Chiharu Shiota: Two Home Countries
September 12, 2025 – January 11, 2026
Opening Reception: Thursday, Sept 11 at 9pm (Members Only)
Special closure: closed Tuesday, Sept 23rd–Sunday, Sept 28th, 2025 due to restricted access during the United Nations General Assembly. Exhibition reopens on Tuesday, Sept 30th, 2025.
Japan Society Gallery presents the first New York solo museum exhibition of contemporary artist Chiharu Shiota (b. 1972). Commemorating the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, Chiharu Shiota: Two Home Countries centers on a newly commissioned, site-specific installation that explores wartime experiences and memories. Placing the original installation in dialogue with other works from Shiota’s oeuvre, the exhibition creates parallels between the humanitarian tragedy of war and the artist’s personal struggles, including confronting her mortality and her bicultural identity living between two home countries. By drawing connections between collective and personal experience and memory, the exhibition contemplates universal issues such as history, humanity, loss, time, space, the body, and national identity.
The exhibition also documents the conceptualization and creative process behind Shiota’s stage set designed for Japan Society’s theater commission KINKAKUJI (Temple of the Golden Pavilion), which will premiere on the opening night of the exhibition. Based on the novel by legendary Japanese author Yukio Mishima (1925–1970), the performance celebrates the centennial year of his birth. This new work brings Shiota’s innovative and deeply intimate stage design to American audiences for the first time.
To learn more, click here.
UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS
Kawai Kanjirō: House to House
March 10 – May 10, 2026
In spring 2026, Japan Society Gallery will present Kawai Kanjirō: House to House, an exhibition celebrating the remarkable life and artistic career of folk potter and avant-garde artist Kawai Kanjirō (1890–1966) for the first time in the United States. Along with his friends philosopher Yanagi Sōetsu (1889–1961) and potter Hamada Shōji (1894–1978), Kawai founded the mingei folk art movement in Japan during the mid-1920s. Featuring works from the Kawai Kanjirō Memorial Museum (and former home of Kawai) in conversation with works of folk art from Japan Society’s collection, the exhibition traces the evolution of the artist’s functional clay ware to his modernist wood sculptures. From Kawai Kanjirō’s house in Kyoto to Japan House in NYC, the exhibition explores Kawai’s profound impact on postwar art in Japan.
To learn more, click here.
MAYUNKIKI: RECLAIM
June 9 – August 16, 2026
In summer 2026 Japan Society Gallery opens the first solo U.S. museum exhibition of contemporary Ainu artist Mayunkiki (b. 1982). A groundbreaking multimedia artist, musician, language teacher, and advocate of Ainu culture, Mayunkiki’s work explores traditional and contemporary Ainu identity. She calls for a reassessment of how Ainu art and culture is exhibited in museums, challenging the typical presentation of Ainu artifacts by mobilizing indigenous voices and living memory. Mayunkiki: Reclaim features the artist’s compelling artistic language—both visual and musical—to advocate for a deeper, more nuanced understanding of Ainu art and culture.
To learn more, click here.
