Exhibitions in Kyoto

Kyoto Museum of Crafts and DesignFreePast

Kyoto Institute of Technology design students make "gifts across time" with Kyoto craft workshops, from braided cord to cloisonné. MOCAD Gallery.

Museum "EKi" KYOTO

Retrospective of Finnish designer Kaj Franck (1911–1989), maker of Kilta, Teema and Kartio: glass and ceramics from the Design Museum Helsinki, his ties to Japan and designers he influenced.

The Kyoto University Museum

Centenary tribute to primatologist and anthropologist Junichiro Itani: field notebooks, manuscripts, photos and objects from African hunter-gatherers and herders.

Kyoto Museum for World Peace, Ritsumeikan University

Screenings of testimony films in Okinawan island languages, recorded 1997-2008 from some 800 Battle of Okinawa survivors and rarely shown outside Okinawa.

Nijo Castle (Nijo-jo)

Original murals from the Kuroshoin, where the shogunate feasted the imperial court in 1626: cherry blossoms and pheasants in full spring colour beneath ink landscapes of ancient China.

Kyoto Museum of Crafts and DesignFree

Original craft works by Kyo-yuzen dyers and weavers of the group Senshokutai, shown and sold. MOCAD Gallery.

Hosomi Museum

Storybook-themed porcelain designed and painted by Heinz Werner, master artist of the modern Meissen manufactory.

Kyoto International Manga MuseumFree

Director Aramata Hiroshi's 20th-anniversary show imagining a future Kyoto shared with aliens and gods, premiering Baron Yoshimoto's 100 alien skull portraits.

Kyoto Museum of Crafts and DesignFree

Young certified Kyoto artisans in Nishijin weaving, yuzen, ceramics, lacquer, bamboo and more show new work; visitors vote for a favourite. MOCAD Gallery.

The Museum of Kyoto

Original manga art and figures by Go Nagai that survived the 2024 Noto earthquake fire at his Wajima memorial museum, plus new drawings made for the show.

Hosomi MuseumPast

Calligraphy, poems and letters by the Zen monk Ryōkan (1758-1831), incl. rarely shown masterpieces "Tenjo Taifu" kite lettering and "Moon Rabbit" long poem.

Nijo Castle (Nijo-jo)Past

Original Kano murals from the Ohiroma's First and Second Rooms, where Emperor Go-Mizunoo watched Noh in 1626: pines, bamboo and golden pheasants, and soaring peafowl.

The Museum of Kyoto

For the 400th anniversary of Emperor Go-Mizunoo's 1626 visit to Nijo Castle, a survey of early-Edo Kan'ei culture: screens, swords and Kano paintings.

Ryukoku Museum

Ahead of its 1,300th anniversary, Fumonji, a mountain temple in Toyohashi, Aichi, lends powerful Heian-period Buddhist sculptures, sutra-mound finds and historical documents.

Kyoto Museum for World Peace, Ritsumeikan UniversityFree

Photo albums found in 2026 trace Ichiro Ogaki from prewar Miyagi through the Manchurian Incident and the Manchukuo army to postwar life, a past he never spoke of.

The Kyoto University Museum

Centenary show for Kyoto University's Institute for Chemical Research: synthetic oil, chemical heritage objects, industry spin-offs and today's research.

Kyoto Railway Museum

Collection display pairing design drawings of trains and equipment with the real parts, such as a wooden pattern for a D60 locomotive grate and a 0 Series speedometer.

The Museum of Kyoto

130 years after Kyoto's Japan Nanga Association formed, works by Tanomura Chokunyu, Tomioka Tessai and fellow literati painters from the Kyoto Prefecture collection.

Kyoto National Museum

Some 250 works inspired by Murasaki Shikibu's classic, including Teika's Blue-Cover manuscript and the scattered "Phantom Genji Scrolls". Two installations.

Kyoto Museum for World Peace, Ritsumeikan University

Five original Hiroshima Panels by Iri and Toshi Maruki, shown in Kyoto for the first time in 42 years, with 61 items incl. documents found in 2025 and the 1953 film.

Kyoto Museum of Crafts and Design

Kyoto Municipal Institute of Industrial Technology and Culture showcase in the EAST SQUARE: Kato Tech makeup brushes and Mori no Kyoto Distillery craft gin.

Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art

Immersive exhibition exploring Zen through Studio Ghibli films, built around Hayao Miyazaki's The Boy and the Heron, in the Higashiyama Cube.

Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art

Collection display on the museum's 1933 founding as the Kyoto Enthronement Memorial Museum of Art, with its earliest acquisitions and archive material.

Kyoto Museum of Crafts and DesignFree

27 objects from 17 Kyoto university museums, chosen around handcraft, mark the Kyoto University Museum Network's 15th year. WEST SQUARE Window Gallery.

Kyoto Railway Museum

For the museum's 10th anniversary, 22 collection photographs of the guest trains brought in on the siding for special displays, including the 113 Series C5 set (2023).

Kyoto Prefectural Insho-Domoto Museum of Fine Arts

60th-anniversary show on how Domoto Insho painted women across his career, from entertainment-district women in his youth to modern works like Takamine Hideko in Black.

Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of ArtFree

Free show in The Triangle: installations, sculpture and drawings turning wallpaper, rubber bands and graffiti into studies of lines, shadows and ground.

Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art

First retrospective in 40 years of Kyoto weaver Yamaga Seika, whose handwoven brocades range from Gion Festival tapestries to locomotives and Tokyo Tower.

Sen-oku Hakuko Kan

Shang and Zhou bronzes cast with ancient Chinese inscriptions (jinwen), the earliest forms of today's characters, read as calligraphy and as historical record.

Sen-oku Hakuko Kan

Modern Japanese-style and Western-style paintings and crafts collected by Sumitomo Shunsui, traced chronologically through his friendships with the artists of his day.

Raku Museum

How the chrysanthemum, emblem of the noble recluse, was painted and carved on Raku tea bowls across the generations, some pieces predating the Edo-period chrysanthemum craze.

Kyoto Museum of Crafts and Design

Kyoto craft skills reimagined as contemporary products and design, plus a parallel show on materials and techniques from five Kyoto makers.

Kyoto Railway Museum

Archive photos of how the museum came to be: construction, trains being moved in and installed, and the halls at the 2016 opening.

Kyoto Railway Museum

Steam locomotives and station buildings of early 20th-century Kyoto, shown with scenes from the anime Eureka Evrika as part of the museum's collaboration with the series.

Kahitsukan – Kyoto Museum of Contemporary Art

60 signed original prints from the collection by Magnum photographer Martine Franck: children, portraits, Tory Island in Ireland, and intimate shots of her husband Henri Cartier-Bresson.

The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto (MoMAK)

The next rotation of MoMAK's collection displays, running alongside the jewellery exhibition; themes include the museum's outdoor sculptures.

Fukuda Art Museum

The museum's first shunga show debuts the 14th-century Chigo Sōshi scroll, with Hokusai's Nami Chidori and love-themed works by Uemura Shōen. Ages 18+ only.

The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto (MoMAK)

About 350 pieces tracing post-war Japanese art jewellery, from the JJDA founders to contemporary makers, with works by Otto Künzli and others.

Kyoto International Manga MuseumFree

Four decades of manga reception in France, Belgium, Spain, Italy and Germany, plus work by European artists who grew up reading it. A 20th-anniversary show.

Kyoto Railway Museum

Kyoto Station 150th anniversary show on railway architecture: four generations of Kyoto Station and their architects, roundhouse drawings and historic station buildings.

Saga Arashiyama Museum of Arts & Culture

Early-modern and modern paintings of Kyoto's sights, festivals, geiko and vegetables, from Hara Zaichū's Aoi Festival scroll to sweet-shop wrappers by Tomioka Tessai.

Nijo Castle (Nijo-jo)

Painted cedar doors of pines and cranes by a Tsurusawa School artist (1800), from the Goshoin's western corridor, one of the palace's 14 door sets shown one at a time.