Kyoto National Museum

Kyoto National Museum opened in 1897 to preserve the temple and shrine treasures of Japan's former imperial capital, a role that shaped its focus on pre-modern Japanese art. It now holds the largest collection of Heian-period objects in the country, split across Fine Arts, Handicrafts, and Archaeology departments.

Among the roughly 6,000 works on view at any time is the Wind God and Thunder God Screens, painted in the Rinpa decorative style associated with ancient Japanese artisans of the Edo period. More than 230 pieces in the Fine Arts collection alone carry National Treasure or Important Cultural Property status, a density of designated works few museums outside Tokyo can match.

The Heisei Chishinkan Wing, completed in 2014, was designed by Yoshio Taniguchi, the same architect behind MoMA's 2004 New York renovation, and now holds the bulk of the permanent collection alongside the museum's original 1895 Meiji-era building.