Art Week Tokyo (AWT) returns for its second year with a program spanning 53 participating galleries, art spaces, and museums from November 7–10. What makes AWT a draw for visitors are the convenient hop-on, hop-off shuttles that take guests around six selected routes, linking up galleries, museums, and other art spaces. In addition, the AWT Focus exhibition, held at the neoclassical Okura Museum of Art, “Earth, Wind, and Fire: Visions of the Future from Asia,” overseen by Mori Art Museum director Mami Kataoka, presents works by 57 artists in a curated selling presentation, while the AWT Video program, curated by New York’s Sculpture Center director Sohrab Mohebbi, presents moving-image works by 13 artists. An architect-designed pop-up bar and a talks program round out AWT’s busy program. Before planning your shuttle routes, here are a few of the gallery and museum highlights from around the Japanese capital in November to put on your lists.   

Sep 25–Jan 19, 2025
Louise Bourgeois
I have been to hell and back. And let me tell you, it was wonderful.
Mori Art Museum 

Although Louise Bourgeois’s ten-meter-tall bronze-and-steel spider sculpture, Maman (1998), has long graced the Roppongi Hills development in which the Mori Art Museum is located, the late French American artist’s work has not been formally exhibited in Japan for decades. Showcasing 106 of her surreal, seminal works is the major retrospective “I have been to hell and back. And let me tell you, it was wonderful,” marking her largest exhibition in the country to date and her first since 1997.

Oct 30–Dec 16
Ei Arakawa-Nash
Paintings Are Popstars
National Art Center, Tokyo

Los Angeles-based performance artist Ei Arakawa-Nash’s first solo museum exhibition in Asia, “Paintings Are Popstars,” displays works by more than 50 artists and collaborators which Arakawa-Nash will venerate and worship as if they were celebrities. The Japanese American artist will also enact regular live performances within the 2,000-square-meter exhibition space, inviting viewers to witness his humorous, yet thought-provoking practice in real time. 

 Aug 3–Nov 10 
A Personal View of Japanese Contemporary Art: Takahashi Ryutaro Collection
Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo

Known for his expansive collection of Japanese contemporary art, psychiatrist Takahashi Ryutaro has gathered more than 3,500 works of art since the 1990s. “A Personal View of Japanese Contemporary Art” aims to present one facet of postwar Japan as well as the new development that the collection took after the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011. 

Nov 2–Feb 9, 2025
Yuko Mohri
On Physis
Artizon Museum

Now in its fifth edition, the Artizon Museum’s annual Jam Session exhibition will invite Tokyo-based artist Yuko Mohri to showcase both new and existing artworks, along with objects from the Ishibashi Foundation collection. Centered around themes of “nature” or “essence,” Mohri’s sculpture and installations play with found materials and naturally occurring elements such as magnetism, electricity, water, air, and dust. 

Nov 6–Dec 21
Vajiko Chachkhiani
Big and Little hands
SCAI The Bathhouse

For his second solo exhibition at SCAI The Bathhouse, “Big and Little Hands,” Georgian artist Vajiko Chachkhiani showcases new sculptures alongside a research-based video installation. Rooted in personal and family narratives, Chachkhiani explores themes of absence and presence, life and death, as well as human relationships under the economic paradigms of capitalism. Based on a poem, the titular video work uses symbolic visual language to unearth the socially constructed layers that shape our psyche.  

Nov 5–Dec 15
Meiro Koizumi
Altar
Mujin-To Production

At Mujin-To Production, multimedia artist Meiro Koizumi presents new sculptures and installations in his solo show “Altar,” which examines the human body’s votive relationship with society. Known for his dark, comedic works, the exhibition features bizarre humanoid sculptures made of everyday objects, furniture, and machine parts, analyzing how hegemonic power structures redefine, or even diminish, the value of the human body.

Nov 7–Jan 11, 2025 
Yoshitomo Nara
I Draw the Line
Blum

Yoshitomo Nara’s solo exhibition at Blum gallery presents a new suite of paintings and drawings on wood panels, resembling placards. Works such as We Are Outlaws, Yes! (2024) perpetuate Nara’s signature motifs, including his wide-eyed human characters and pithy phrases, but introduce added surface texture and a more muted color palette than is typical for his paintings. These additions recall the old wooden houses found in the rural, southern Hokkaido village where Nara created the new works. 

Nov 2–Dec 7
Hiroshi Sugita
apples and lemons
Tomio Koyama Gallery Kyobashi

To inaugurate its third Tokyo venue, Tomio Koyama Gallery Kyobashi presents “apples and lemons,” a solo show featuring old and new abstract works by the acclaimed painter Hiroshi Sugito. Through simple colors, textures, and shapes, Sugito’s paintings explore the titular fruits from multiple angles, highlighting their unexpected similarities and revitalizing our perception of the familiar and mundane. 

Oct 26–Nov 22 
Yukio Fujimoto
Bloom’s Broom
ShugoArts

Osaka-based artist Yukio Fujimoto returns to ShugoArts for his solo exhibition, “Bloom’s Broom,” to explore how readymades can break down and transform through the fundamental force of gravity. For the latest rendition of his interactive tile project, BROOM (TILE) (2024), Fujimoto covers the gallery floor with 800 unglazed tiles for visitors to walk on, and presents new works from his long-running SUGAR series (1997– ) which capture the transience of objects in a tangible, collaborative way. 

Oct 5–Feb 8, 2025
Ryoko Aoki
Stories About Boundaries
Take Ninagawa

For the first time in six years, Ryoko Aoki presents a solo showcase at Take Ninagawa in “Stories About Boundaries.” Often using collage techniques in her works, Aoki’s latest show features shallow boxes with small compartments within that hold blue watercolor paintings and various tiny objects on diagram-like drawings.  

Aug 7–Nov 11
Keiichi Tanaami
Adventures in Memory
National Art Center, Tokyo

A leading figure in Japan’s underground art scene, the late Keiichi Tanaami is known for his magazine and advertisement design as well as forays into 1960s-era pop art. His career as a designer began in the mid-1970s, and he became the first art director of the Japanese edition of Playboy magazine. Covering Tanaami’s creative journey of more than 60 years, “Adventures in Memory” presents his numerous genre-defying multimedia artworks, films, and graphics, spanning the Andy Warhol-inspired ORDER MADE!! series (1965) to his own commissioned fashion-brand creations, as well as the first showing of his dream diaries recorded since the 1970s.

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