About Taguchi Art Collection
The Taguchi Art Collection was established by Hiroshi Taguchi, founder of the Misumi Group and the Misumi Collection. The collection has about 550 works of contemporary art (as of December 2020) from around the world.
Hiroshi established the Misumi Collection, which focuses on American pop art and, at the time, was a pioneer of corporate art collections in Japan. After Hiroshi retired from his position as president of the company, he started to build his personal collection named the Taguchi Art Collection. Since then, Hiroshi has expanded the scope of his collection using a wide range of media including three-dimensional art, photography, and videos. Since 2013, Hiroshi’s daughter, Miwa, has taken over the management, and keeps expanding it as well as holding exhibitions of the collection.
Collecting with the intention of public exhibition
Around the end of the 1980s, Hiroshi was surprised when he encountered Keith Haring’s work being displayed in a street. This surprise inspired Hiroshi, and he said, “I would like to have some artwork in my office for everyone to see, because I want to let people feel the sense of innovation from artwork”. Therefore, from the beginning, the collection was based on Hiroshi’s passion that the artwork would be shown to the public.
Hiroshi believes artwork is only meaningful when it is seen by others. With this in mind, Hiroshi continued to collect artwork for people to see, even though they were in his private collection. This is why many of the works of art in the collection are large-scale, so called “museum pieces”.
Our mission is to provide opportunities for the public to see contemporary art
Once the scale of the collection has been established, it is common to build private museums to make the collections public.
However, the Taguchi Art Collection does not have a specific exhibition space, but exhibitions of this collection are held all over Japan in response to requests from public art museums.
The reason is that we want to bring our collection as close as possible to the people who come to see it. In particular, we have been actively exhibiting outside the Tokyo metropolitan area where there are few opportunities to see contemporary art. In these exhibitions, we focus especially on works by contemporary artists who are attracting attention around the world.
We hope that by inviting people to see the high-quality artwork that we have carefully selected and collected through the network and know-how, there will be an opportunity for people, especially children, to experience and become familiar with how wonderful contemporary art is.
Hiroshi Taguchi
Born in the Gifu Prefecture in 1937, Taguchi is the Founder of the Misumi Corporation (now the Misumi Group Inc.). He stepped down from his position as President of Misumi in 2002, then he established M-out Inc. to develop and foster new businesses, and currently he is the chairman and representative director. He founded the Misumi Collection while he was the president at Misumi and began collecting contemporary art on his own around 2000. Hiroshi received the Commissioner for Cultural Affairs Award in 2019.
Establishment of the Taguchi Art Foundation – In Search of More Public Benefit
Our collection holds exhibitions all over Japan and so far, we have had exhibitions at more than ten public and private museums. While holding the exhibitions, we noticed the weakness of Japan’s cultural administration, especially the difficulty of managing public museums due to budget reductions by local governments. There is also a lack of opportunities for children to appreciate art in their educational programs. Curators of local museums who we worked together were all excellent and highly conscious, but they were struggling to face the reality – because there are “no budget,” “no staff,” and “no collection of contemporary art”. On the other hand, world-famous museums have rich collections and funds, and moreover, these museums are filled with children. Therefore, I am very concerned that the foundation that supports Japanese art will collapse if things continue as they are.
Considering the current Japanese situation and how our collection contributes to improving this situation, we established the Taguchi Art Foundation in August 2020 within the Public Promoting Association. In order to ensure that the collection is seen and secured in the future, we have decided to gradually transfer ownership from the Taguchi family to the Foundation, which will collect and exhibit the artwork for the purpose of carrying out permanent and active public service activities.
As a result, the collection of the Taguchi Art Foundation will be reborn with openness and will become everyone’s collection. By opening the collection from private to public, we will be able to utilize the collection for a wider range of exhibitions and educational activities.
Specifically, we will (1) increase opportunities for children to see artwork, (2) support the holding of exhibitions of contemporary art in local museums and other public venues, and (3) create opportunities for people to become familiar with artwork outside of museums.
We believe if we unify the power of many people, we can create the foundation for a future that fosters a rich culture.
Public Promoting Association/ Taguchi Art Foundation
Founder Hiroshi Taguchi
Executive Adviser Miwa Taguchi
Adviser Under consideration
The Artsplus Institute of Contemporary Arts
Established in 2019 to focus on the social contribution activities of the Taguchi Art Collection, we, at the Artsplus Institute of Contemporary Arts aims to share our knowledge to improve the understanding of art among Japanese people.
We would like to function as a platform to share trends and knowledge about the global art scene with Japanese people, focusing mainly on lectures, archiving and exhibition planning. The institution is also responsible for the practical part of the collection management of the Taguchi Art Collection and the Taguchi Art Foundation, including exhibition planning, artwork management, and website management.
Representative director Miwa Taguchi
Director Hiroshi Taguchi
Auditor Toru Nakamura (CPA)
