Manifesto accompanies The San Diego Museum of Art for the exhibition Emulation and Admiration: Two Stories of Collecting European Art - European Master Paintings from The San Diego Museum of Art and The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo. 

The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo
11 March - 8 June 2025

This exhibition is a collaboration between the San Diego Museum of Art and the National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo that combines a total of 88 works from the collections of the two museums to introduce the unique charms and evolution of a wide range of Western art from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century through dialogues among the works.

Mainly during the 1930s, the San Diego Museum of Art built what was one of the greatest collections of European Old Master paintings in the western United States at that time in terms of both quality and scale. It is a unique museum that strongly reflects the history and culture of the San Diego area as well as the tastes of its benefactors, and its collection contains numerous masterpieces including early Renaissance and seventeenth-century Spanish paintings. Meanwhile, the National Museum of Western Art was established in 1959 based on Kojiro Matsukata’s collection of mainly Impressionist art and began systematically collecting Old Master paintings in the late 1960s. Since then, it has gone on to build and enrich a comprehensive collection that covers the major schools and genres of Western art history based on studies and surveys by its successive directors and researchers.

This exhibition features artworks from the collections of the two museums divided into 36 sub themes consisting of pairs and small groups. It aims to provide a lucid introduction to the fascinating course of Western art history from the Renaissance to the Impressionists through comparison-based dialogues among the works. Additionally, the museums share a common ground in collecting European art despite being located in two non-European countries, Japan and the United States. The exhibition will also focus on this aspect and introduce the objectives and ideals that served as the bases for the two museums’ collection of Western paintings while comparing and contrasting masterpieces in their respective collections.

Furthermore, an additional five paintings from the San Diego Museum of Art will be displayed in the permanent collection galleries of the National Museum of Western Art during the exhibition period as an attempt at further dialogue between the collections. All 49 artworks from the San Diego Museum of Art, including these ones, will be on display for the first time ever in Japan.

The exhibition is organised by The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo; The San Diego Museum of Art; Nikkei Inc in special collaboration with Manifesto Expo.