Past Special Exhibition 2017

Masterpieces from the Shiseido Art House Collection
Celebrating 40 Years of the Shiseido Art House — Part 1: Japanese Paintings & Lacquer Art —

October 3 (Tue) – December 17 (Sun), 2017

The Shiseido Art House opened in November, 1978 in Kakegawa City, Shizuoka Prefecture, and in the four decades since it has served as a regional art museum through well over 100 exhibitions.

The exhibition “Masterpieces from the Shiseido Art House” was presented in gratitude to all those who have supported us over the years, and thus every effort was made to include many of the collection’s most popular items. Part 1 featured approximately fifty examples of Japanese paintings and lacquer craft, many of which originated with Shiseido’s “Tsubakikai Art Exhibitions,” held intermittently since 1947, or its “Exhibition of Modern Industrial Arts,” a series that ran between 1975 and 1995.

Considering the question of what a corporation might do to cultivate good relations with its customers, one answer can be found in Shiseido’s four decades of operating an art museum with a collection offered “admission free” for public appreciation. It has been said that “the collection is an expression of the collector,” and in this way a corporate collection, too, shows the face of the company that holds it. Shiseido’s collection of beautiful art well and truly does embody the company’s aesthetic sense, albeit in a different form than its cosmetics products.

We hope this exhibition will help people understand Shiseido more fully, that it has long been a place for experiencing and sharing the pleasures of art, and that it has deepened positive, fruitful relationships between Shiseido and its customers.

Craft for All of Us 2017 + Shiseido Art House Post-Renewal Reopening

July 4 (Tue) through September 24 (Sun), 2017

We at the Shiseido Art House are pleased to announce that the interior renovations that kept our doors closed from September 26, 2016 are completed, and the museum was reopened on July 4, 2017. Our first post-renewal exhibition was Craft for All of Us 2017, the final installment of the “Craft for All of Us” series we began in 2015.

Since our founding in 1872 (at the time as Japan’s first Western-style pharmacy) Shiseido’s ongoing mission has been to bring diverse culture to the world, illuminated by our own aesthetic sensibilities, whether at the original Shiseido Parlour (Japan’s first Western-style eatery) or through opening the Shiseido Gallery (Japan’s longest running art gallery). In everything we create, be it a product or even just the simplest advertising pamphlet, our aspiration is to dig deep to make things that are beautiful, graceful, and dignified. In each age and in step with the changing times, we have taken advantage of our position as a cosmetics company to advocate always for beauty and high quality, and to bring a sense of art and artistry into everyday life.

The “Craft for All of Us” exhibition series has aimed to bring artisanal craft works—these days so often made distant to us as “art” objects—back into our everyday lives. It has also been an opportunity for us to renew Shiseido’s long-held commitment to enriching people’s lives through beauty.

Craft for All of Us 2017 featured mainly new works by five craftspeople, shown alongside items carried over from the previous two exhibitions and others selected from the Art House collection. Besides introducing these enriching, enjoyable works and the carefully transmitted traditions they represent, the exhibition also highlighted ways in which these items might be used and enjoyed in everyday life.

Our aim in this first post-renovation exhibition was to make the Shiseido Art House a place to share not only the power of craft, but also the happiness that such sincerely crafted, beautiful things bring into our lives, especially in these increasingly uncertain and often frivolous times. Thanks to the many visitors who came to see this exhibition, we feel successful in having won considerable sympathy toward this view of traditional craft.