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Oita Prefectural Art Museum

Little knownBarely documented in English. This is the kind of place the site exists for.

Researched and written by Hinato

OPAMBan Shigerubamboo craftarchitectureOita City

Photo: Suicasmo / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0) · original

Watching the process at Oita Prefectural Art Museum changes what the finished piece looks like on a shelf back home.

Ban Shigeru designed this building around a single idea: that a museum should not be a sealed box. The whole ground floor of the street frontage is made of folding glass panels that open completely in good weather, so the lobby becomes a covered part of the street, and the timber lattice across the upper facade is a reference to Oita's bamboo weaving rather than a decorative motif.

The collection is built on Oita artists, with a strong holding of Takeda Unpo and Fukuda Heihachiro and a serious bamboo craft section — the prefecture is Japan's main producer of madake bamboo and the craft is a designated traditional industry. Entry to the collection galleries is inexpensive and the building itself is free to walk into.

Before you visit the workshop

Workshop hours

10:00 AM – 7:00 PM (last entry 6:30 PM) | Until 8:00 PM Fridays and Saturdays (last entry 7:30 PM)

Closed: Open year-round

Cost

¥300 adults for the collection exhibition | ¥200 university and high school students | Free for junior high school and under | Free for high school students on Saturdays | Special exhibitions priced separately

Best time to visit

Year-round | Mild weather, when the ground-floor facade opens onto the street

Time to allow

1.5–2 hours

Access route

Directions

Kotobuki-machi 2-1, Oita City. About a short walk from Oita Station. Open year-round. Collection exhibition ¥300 adults, ¥200 university and high school students, free for junior high school and under, and free for high school students on Saturdays. Special exhibitions are priced separately.

How it's made

**The facade opens.** On mild days the ground-floor glass folds away entirely and the lobby runs into the street. If it is shut when you arrive, that is weather rather than policy. **Bamboo is the local collection to see.** Oita produces most of Japan's madake and Beppu has been the centre of bamboo basketry for centuries. The craft holdings here are stronger than the painting for a visitor with no prior interest in either. **No closing day.** Unusual for a Japanese public museum and useful on a Monday, when almost everything else in the prefecture is shut. **Three hundred yen and free after school.** The collection ticket is priced as civic infrastructure. Special exhibitions are separate and cost several times that. **The Oita Art Plaza is nearby.** Isozaki Arata's 1966 former prefectural library, an early landmark of Japanese Metabolism, stands ten minutes away and is free to enter.

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