★★★★★ 5.0
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Mori Art Museum
This museum exists in the clouds but has no permanent collection whatsoever. Standing before the gleaming steel and glass facade of Roppongi Hills Mori Tower, you're looking at a building designed to mimic samurai armor, its horizontal lines deliberately crafted to deflect radio waves from nearby Tokyo Tower. The gentle curves aren't just aesthetic... they're engineering genius by Kohn Pedersen Fox architects who studied origami to perfect these slopes. Behind you at ground level stands the Museum Cone, a hundred-foot elliptical entrance that hints at the cultural treasure floating 238 meters above your head. Visionary Minoru Mori spent seventeen years developing this utopian complex, placing his art museum on the 53rd floor as the "cultural heart" of what would become Japan's largest column-free commercial space. As you ascend to the museum, you're entering a space that revolutionized Tokyo's art scene by staying open until ten PM. In 2018, thirty percent of visitors discovered contemporary masterpieces after sunset... something no other major Tokyo museum dared attempt. Here, art literally touches the sky, and every exhibition is temporary, making each visit a once-in-a-lifetime encounter with creativity suspended between earth and stars.
Did You Know?
- The Mori Art Museum is one of the world’s few major contemporary art museums located on the top floor of a skyscraper—specifically, the 53rd floor of the Roppongi Hills Mori Tower—offering visitors panoramic views of Tokyo alongside cutting-edge art, a unique blend of ‘art with altitude’ that has become a signature experience for locals and tourists alike.
- Founded in 2003 by real estate developer Minoru Mori, the museum was conceived as a cultural cornerstone of the Roppongi Hills ‘city within a city’ project, reflecting Mori’s vision that ‘culture shapes a city’s identity’ and aiming to make contemporary art accessible to everyone, from children to seniors, by keeping unusually late hours (open until 10 p.m. during exhibitions) and attracting a remarkable 30% of its visitors after 5 p.m..
- The Mori Art Museum has hosted exhibitions by globally celebrated artists such as Yayoi Kusama, Ai Weiwei, and Jeff Koons, but it also champions emerging talent and experimental projects, while managing public art installations across Tokyo’s Roppongi and Toranomon Hills, making it a dynamic hub for both international art trends and local creative communities.