Kyoto National Museum opened in 1897 as the Imperial Museum of Kyoto.
Today, the museum maintains a collection of about 14,600 pieces of art and cultural properties with close ties to Kyoto, including Japanese and East Asian artworks, as well as excavated cultural treasures. The museum exhibits a range of cultural properties, including archaeological artifacts, ceramics, Buddhist statues and other forms of sculpture, paintings from the Heian through early modern periods, calligraphy, textiles, lacquer work, metalwork, and other arts and crafts that reflect the history of Kyoto. The museum also regularly holds special exhibitions.
The museum has two exhibition spaces: the first is the Meiji Kotokan Hall, a Western-style, retro red brick building that has remained intact since the museum first opened. The building itself is designated as an Important Cultural Property (as of July 2021, exhibitions here are suspended due to plans for seismic retrofitting).
The second is the Heisei Chishinkan Wing, which was built in 2014 and designed by Yoshio Taniguchi, who also designed the new building for the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. It has a striking, modern appearance and includes a café-restaurant called The Muses that is managed by the luxury hotel Hyatt Regency Kyoto, as well as a museum store called Kyoto Benrido that sells goods related to the museum's exhibits. The café Maeda Coffee is located at the south gate, and from there you can enjoy the beautiful view of the Meiji Kotokan Hall and the garden.
