Art Exhibitions and Events Happening in Tokyo This Month: October 2024

50th Anniversary Osamu Goods Exhibition

Celebrating the 50th anniversary of Osamu Goods, the Sogo Museum of Art will explore the history and design philosophy of the series. 

Man Ray, Giant Chess Set, 1961. Installation view, c. 1961. Photo by Jacqueline Hyde.

Take Ninagawa: Man Ray

Take Ninagawa highlights this multidimensional practice with a solo exhibition that centers on one of Man Ray’s most enduring obsessions: the game of chess. Building on recent global retrospectives like the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 2025–26 showcase, this exhibition explores how chess served not just as a thematic subject, but as a dynamic structural framework for his art — a site where logic, strategy, chance and desire collide.

Ufan Lee, Untitled, 1979. Photo by Nobutada Omote

Lee Ufan: Work on Paper / Sculpture

Scai The Bathhouse is hosting Lee’s first solo gallery show in Tokyo in four years. Bringing together drawings and sculptures from the 1970s through recent years, this show offers a clear entry point into his quiet, contemplative practice across paper and three-dimensional media. You’ll see charcoal and watercolor works on paper, along with pieces from his celebrated Relatum Sculpture series, which place natural river stones beside industrial iron plates.

Rampage by Danilo Kato Exhibition

UltraSuperNew Kura gallery will host an exhibition by artist Danilo Kato, featuring the personification of thoughts and memories.

Ryuichi Sakamoto + Shiro Takatani: Ambient Kyoto - Tokyo Exhibition

The Ambient Kyoto exhibition will be held in Tokyo for the first time, featuring "async - immersion" by Ryuichi Sakamoto and Shiro Takatani.

Aya Fujioka, from "Here Goes River" series (2013-2017) ©Aya Fujioka

I’m So Happy You Are Here: Japanese Women Photographers Exhibition

Internationally, Japanese photography has been represented largely by men — Moriyama, Araki, Sugimoto. This exhibition sets out to rethink and expand that canon. Built around a 2024 book of the same name, edited by Pauline Vermare and Lesley A. Martin, it gathers Japanese women photographers who have shaped the medium since the 1950s.

Anna Gaskell "She is Making A Spectacle Out Of Herself" installation view 2026. photo by Ken Kato

Anna Gaskell: She is Making A Spectacle Out Of Herself

At this exhibition, you’ll see a new series of oil paintings infused with Gaskell's signature air of mystery and theatricality. Featuring bold outlines and rich, dark hues, the paintings depict women and girls in eerie, dreamlike scenes.

Azabudai Hills Pop Up Box Maiden's Bookshelf Exhibition

Azabudai Hills Gallery Space's new exhibition reimagines famous literature by contemporary illustrators like the Maiden's Bookshelf series. 

A Feast for the Eyes: Tableware Exhibition

The Suntory Museum of Art will host an exhibit on ceramic tableware from the Momoyama to Edo periods, celebrating "beauty in everyday life."

Invitation from Hogwarts at Warner Bros. Studio Tour Tokyo

The Making of Harry Potter presents “Invitation from Hogwarts,” a limited-time experience running from March 18 to September 6, 2026.

Rina Banerjee, "A woman must keep moving…" (2022). Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin.

Rina Banerjee: "You made me leave home…

This exhibition, which marks the 20th anniversary of Espace Louis Vuitton Tokyo and a decade of the Fondation’s international “Hors-les-murs” program, features 19 works that explore the fluid nature of identity. A highlight of the show is a monumental installation inspired by Jules Verne’s novel Around the World in Eighty Days, featuring a massive dome from which a cascade of objects is suspended.

Hiroshi Sugimoto: Extinction Exhibition

The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo will host an exhibition with renowned Japanese photographer and architect Hiroshi Sugimoto.

Picasso, Through the Eyes of Paul Smith

Pablo Picasso never settled into a single way of seeing. He moved restlessly — from the deep blues of grief to the splintered geometry of cubism, into ceramics, sculpture, theater and the unflinching protest of “Guernica.”This exhibition looks at all of that through an unexpected lens. British designer Paul Smith, drawing on the collection of the Musée national Picasso-Paris, has designed the layout himself — and the result is full of color and small, delightful surprises. Around 80 works, including “Portrait of a Man” from the Blue Period and “Paul as Harlequin,” unfold in a loose, easy chronology rather than a strict progression.It builds on “Picasso Celebration: The Collection in a New Light!” — the 2023 Paris show marking 50 years since the artist’s death — now traveling internationally, reimagined here as a space that feels playful, personal and alive.

Mikiko Hara, from the series Periphery of Speech, 2004. Collection of Tokyo Photographic Art Museum

Tokyo Photographic Art Museum Collection: Tomorrow’s Dining Table

The act of eating is inseparable from the act of living, acting as a powerful lens that brings our personal memories and social ties into sharp focus. The Tokyo Photographic Art Museum explores this profound relationship in “Tomorrow’s Dining Table,” the latest installment of its ongoing TOP Collection series.

Ron Mueck Exhibition

Ron Mueck, a contemporary artist, will hold an exhibition at the Mori Art Museum with figurative sculptures that reflect life and mortality.

Hasegawa Kiyoshi: The Trajectory of a Paris-Based Printmaker

Kiyoshi Hasegawa left Japan for Paris after WWI and revived mezzotint printmaking there, running with Matisse, Picasso and Chagall's circle. This exhibition draws rarely-seen work spanning his six-decade career.

Artists at the Café: From the Impressionists, Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec to Picasso

Long before they were textbook fixtures, iconic painters like Édouard Manet, Vincent van Gogh and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec gathered in the smoky haze of Montmartre’s cafes, cabarets and dance halls. This exhibition celebrates this vibrant, frequently overlooked subculture through roughly 130 masterpieces.

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, "The Hundred Guildens" circa 1648. Etching, drypoint, burin on Japanese paper. National Museum of Western Art.

Rembrandt the Etcher: His Challenges and His Impact

The first large-scale survey of Rembrandt’s prints to ever arrive in Japan, the exhibition follows both that breakthrough and the centuries of influence it set in motion. Some 130 works will be on display, among them the National Museum of Western Art’s own famed “The Hundred Guilder Print” and “The Three Trees.”

Janu Tokyo x Jean Jullien: "The Guests"

Takiguchi Shuzo: Writing and Drawing

This exhibition poses a fundamental question: for a man who spent a lifetime engaging with the world through the written word, what did it mean to suddenly communicate through lines, watercolor and ink? This show marks the first major public unveiling of the Ishibashi Foundation’s recently acquired Takiguchi collection, putting roughly 80 of his experimental, multimedia works on display.

On the Asymmetry of the Universe at teamLab Borderless

Tokyo’s teamLab Borderless has unveiled On the Asymmetry of the Universe, an exhibition celebrating the reopening of the museum’s Light Sculpture – Flow artwork space.

Scenery of a Refreshing Breeze: Victorian Paintings and French Impressionism

By pairing Victorian-era British painters with French Impressionist pioneers, the exhibition offers a soothing look back at natural landscapes and human life just as the modern world was beginning to accelerate. On the British side, you’ll find idyllic, detailed landscapes by Benjamin Williams Leader alongside gentle portraits by Charles Edward Perugini — images that offered 19th-century viewers a peaceful escape from urban sprawl. On the French side, the works displayed trace the birth of Impressionism itself.

Nam June Paik: The 20th Anniversary of his Passing

Long before smartphones, AI or even color TV were household realities, Korean artist Nam June Paik (1932–2006) was already using monitors, cameras and electronic signals to rethink what art could be. Marking two decades since the media art pioneer’s passing, Watarium is taking a deep look back at his legacy.

Sanrio Characters Exhibition Hotel Floria Tokyo

Korea's hit Sanrio interactive exhibition will come to Tokyo, immersing fans into a cute hotel concept with themed rooms and special effects.