Image: The Museum of Art, Kōchi, Kōchi-shi
The Museum of Art, Kōchi is presenting a collection-based special exhibition that brings together works addressing war and nationalism, including pieces by Otto Dix, Anselm Kiefer and Shin Miyazaki. The exhibition opened on July 19 and runs through September 22, 2026, in the museum’s second-floor gallery spaces, where paintings and prints are on view.
According to the museum, the display is organized as two related features: ‘War’ and ‘Hinomaru Illumination’. The first focuses on artistic responses to war through works by Dix, Kiefer and Miyazaki. The second centers on Yukinori Yanagi’s work ‘Hinomaru Illumination’, installed alone in a large 400-square-metre space.
The museum’s exhibition text frames the project against current global conflict and the 81st year since the end of the Second World War, presenting war and nation not as distant abstractions but as urgent contemporary issues. In ‘War’, Dix’s print series ‘War’ is shown in its entirety, with all 50 works included. The museum also highlights Kiefer’s ‘Atanor’, which it says takes Nazi looting during the Second World War as a subject, and Miyazaki’s ‘Lageri no Kabe (Komosomorisku Daisan Bunsho)’, based on the artist’s experience of detention in Siberia.
The second feature, ‘Hinomaru Illumination’, presents Yanagi’s 1992 work as a single installation measuring 3 metres high by 4.5 metres wide. The museum describes it as arranged like a neon sign in a bubble-era entertainment district, with red and white neon tubes blinking according to a programmed sequence so that the image of Japan’s national flag continually shifts. The museum says the light of the work poses questions for viewers living in an unsettled world.
A related public event is scheduled for August 30, when Yanagi will appear in dialogue with museum director Atsuo Yasuda. The talk is listed as part of the exhibition’s accompanying programme and will take place at the museum. Another programme, a Saturday lecture on Dix’s ‘War’, is set for August 15.
The exhibition is being held in Gallery Rooms B and C on the museum’s second floor. Admission is listed at 800 yen for adults, 500 yen for university students and free for high school students and younger, with discounts and exemptions available for selected categories.
