Miyagi Museum of Art

Miyagi Museum of Art is a prefectural art museum in Kawauchi, Aoba Ward, Sendai. The main building opened on 3 November 1981, and the Sato Tadayoshi Memorial Museum next door to the west opened on 1 June 1990. It is about 1.2 km from Sendai Castle and about a 7-minute walk from Kokusai Center Station on the Tozai subway line.

The main building was designed by Kunio Maekawa. It has one basement level and two floors above ground, with four galleries, two on each of the first and second floors. It won the 24th BCS Prize in 1983 and was selected as one of the 100 Best Public Buildings in 1998. There are four gardens: the front garden, the courtyard, the north garden and Alice's Garden, and the side of the memorial museum facing Alice's Garden is a curved half-mirror glass wall.

The core of the collection is painting, prints, sculpture and crafts since the Meiji Restoration with ties to Miyagi and the Tohoku region, including Takahashi Yuichi's Front Gate of the Miyagi Prefectural Office and Munakata Shiko's Purna's Fence. The museum also holds 45 works by the Gutai Art Association and the Sunouchi collection. Foreign artists include Kandinsky, Klee and Schiele, and the Miura collection of late 19th and early 20th century French and Italian posters is another distinctive feature.

The Sato Tadayoshi Memorial Museum shows work by the sculptor Sato Tadayoshi in its ground-floor gallery, and the museum holds about 1,100 of his works. It has a coffee shop and a multipurpose hall. The main building also has a studio, a children's play room, a lecture hall, a library, a restaurant and a museum shop.

Exhibitions change through the year, so check the official website before visiting. Allow one to two hours for the galleries, gardens and memorial museum. Sendai Castle, Osaki Hachimangu (about 1.3 km) and Jozenji-dori Avenue (about 1.5 km) are nearby. From Sendai Station the city bus takes about 15 minutes, and the Loople Sendai tourist loop bus also stops here.