Image: Nagano Prefectural Art Museum
The Nagano Prefectural Art Museum has announced a collaborative exhibition with the Obuse Museum, Nakajima Chinami Museum that brings together works centered on artists connected to Shinshu, alongside a special display devoted to Japanese painter Nakajima Seiyo. Titled 'Shinshu no Dainamikkusu – Sokai Gaka-tachi no Sakuhin o Chushin ni' ('The Dynamism of Shinshu: Works by Evacuated Painters at the Core'), the exchange exhibition runs from 8 August to 5 October 2026 at the Obuse Museum, Nakajima Chinami Museum in Obuse Town, Nagano Prefecture.
According to the museum, the exchange exhibition is part of a broader programme in which regional art institutions in the prefecture work together, using both collections to plan and mount exhibitions jointly. The current project is presented with the Obuse Museum, Nakajima Chinami Museum and the Nagano Prefectural Art Museum, and it focuses on works by artists with ties to Shinshu, including modern and wartime works, pieces by painters who evacuated to the region, and works by artists shaped by their wartime experiences.
The museum’s introduction to the exhibition connects the project to Nakajima Seiyo, identified as a Japanese-style painter active in the 20th century. The text says that Seiyo evacuated from Yokohama to Obuse during part of the wartime and postwar period, where he formed many relationships. It also notes that a special exhibition held in Obuse in 1990, on the first anniversary of Seiyo’s death, helped lead to the later donation of works by his son, Nakajima Chinami, who was born in Obuse, and to the establishment of the museum in 1992.
The exhibition is framed around the upheavals of modern and contemporary history, particularly the major social changes brought by the Second World War. The museum says that many artists evacuated to Shinshu during the war, while others from the region went to the front. The exhibition presents those changing times through a range of works that trace the continuity of artistic production across that period.
In parallel with the main exhibition, the Obuse museum will host a 'Nakajima Seiyo Special Display' from 8 August to 5 October 2026 in its second-floor gallery. The museum also announced two related gallery talks featuring Nakajima Chinami and curators from both museums, scheduled for 11 August at 2:00 pm and 26 September at 2:00 pm.
Both the special display and the gallery talks take place at the Obuse Museum, Nakajima Chinami Museum. The talks will be held in Exhibition Rooms 1 and 2 and require an admission ticket but no advance registration. The main exchange exhibition is open from 8 August to 5 October 2026, with the museum closed on Wednesdays except in September, when it remains open on Wednesdays.
