Kyoto is at its most brilliant and beautiful in autumn, with its World Heritage scenery colored in red and golden leaves. This year, it's also a time when visitors have the rare opportunity to learn about the essence of Kyoto culture at the Kyoto National Museum.
After five years of construction, the Heisei Chishinkan, a new wing of the Kyoto National Museum designed by Yoshio Taniguchi, opened to the public on Sept. 13. To celebrate this new era in its 117-year history, the museum is presenting "Kyoto: Splendors of the Ancient Capital," an exhibition of hundreds of works to be shown in two installments (Part I until Oct. 13 and Part II from Oct. 15 to Nov. 16).
"The exhibition showcases the most significant masterpieces from the museum's collections of paintings, calligraphy, sculpture, decorative arts and archaeological artifacts," says Hideo Yamamoto, one of the museum's curators. "Out of 12,000 works in storage, we carefully selected 400, including 62 National Treasures and more than 122 Important Cultural Properties. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see such a rich line up of treasures of Japanese art at a single venue."