”A Breathing Museum” Nagasaki Prefectural Art Museum

A museum with an unprecedented viewpoint

The Nagasaki Prefectural Art Museum, which opened in April 2005, closes at 8 pm so that business people can visit the museum after work. It is their concept to not only attract art enthusiasts, but also people of all interests to visit and use the facilities, and to provide services from the user’s point of view.

In the stairs between the 1st and 2nd floors of the building, there is indirect lighting made using Nagasaki’s ”Hasami-yaki” ceramic boards. The light from behind the boards creates a space with gentle lighting. At the cafe in the museum, you can enjoy cakes and desserts with beverages such as beer, wine and Cava (Spanish sparkling wine), which is unthinkable in public museums. Defying ”common sense”, the museum has attracted about 350,000 visitors a year. The popularity of the museum stands out among other prefectural and metropolitan museums.

The museum strives to be a ”Breathing Museum”, a futuristic form of a museum. Just as living creatures breath in and out, the museum will take in various information and stimuli from outside, and will breath them out as new forms of stimuli….

The existence of the art museum changes from the conventional ”solid” to ”liquid”, maintaining an interactive relationship with the region, absorbing opinions, and evoking memories of the land. The museum creates new topos (places) that are not limited to inside the museum, while cooperating with areas such as cities and remote islands, and around the world such as Asia and Europe, in various fields other than art. One of the objectives of the museum is to be an art museum with an unprecedented viewpoint that will greatly revitalize cities and areas while breathing beyond the framework of an art museum.