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This year marks 30 years of the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo. The museum鈥檚 initial displays from the permanent collection, taken from a total of around 3500 items including works originally from the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, aimed primarily to present currents of contemporary art accessibly and from an international perspective, through carefully-curated selections of representative works with a particular focus on post-war Japanese avant-garde art.

Subsequent ongoing acquisitions then brought new, additional viewpoints, these currents branching off in various directions, and undergoing change. Since 2005, under the MOT Collection banner, permanent collection shows have taken a multifaceted approach to presenting the museum鈥檚 holdings, perhaps by focusing on an individual artist, or by comparing works in different media and from different eras, but with a single overarching theme.

To mark this milestone 30th anniversary, the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo presents 鈥淣ine Profiles: 1935鈫�2025,鈥� a survey of 90 years of art exhibited over nine rooms, each dedicated to a different ten-year period. Despite covering so many decades鈥攋ust as the museum鈥檚 exhibitions did when it first opened鈥攅ach room succeeds in revisiting the collection from multiple different perspectives. 1935 was chosen as the starting point due to the acquisition over time of a considerable number of works from the prewar and wartime periods, allowing links with postwar art to be identified; while the explicit naming of the year 2025 as the end point indicates that this is a view of the collection as it is right here, right now.

The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo collection currently stands at around 6,000 items, and is also far more diverse than it was 30 years ago. Constantly being updated, it will duly pass to the next generation incomplete, but various profiles emerge depending on where we focus, and how those features are presented. We hope 鈥淣ine Profiles: 1935鈫�2025鈥� will encourage visitors to take a fresh look at the art of our era, and ponder how the past has brought us to where we are now.