Museum Tries to Regain Public Trust After Artworks Go Missing
By Pamela Wong
Exterior view of Arts Maebashi. Courtesy Arts Maebashi.
Following a controversy over the loss of borrowed artworks and the former director’s delays in reporting the incident, Arts Maebashi, a public museum in Japan’s central Gunma prefecture, is struggling to rehabilitate its reputation. In March, Japanese art curator and scholar Fumihiko Sumitomo resigned from his position as director after revelations emerged that six artworks had gone missing in January 2020 during a relocation of the museum’s storage and that the museum had delayed informing the city or the artists’ families until months later. The city government, which oversees the museum’s operation, has now set up the Arts Maebashi Review Committee for Better Solutions, with local government officials and art professionals—including the gallerist Tomio Koyama and the director of Hara Museum ARC, Kazuko Aono—to review the incident and to prevent recurrence of similar incidents in the future.
