The Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum was founded as Japan’s first public art museum with a core role as a venue for artists to display their works. In this role, it has grown in close correlation with the development of Japanese modern and contemporary art over the past 100 years. During those years, the artists—working alone in privacy, in locations far from the museum—focused on their work and created for themselves, first of all, without expectation of approval. By looking back at the Museum’s 100 years alongside the same 100 years of the artists, the exhibition will offer an opportunity to fundamentally rethink the meaning of art and consider how art museums should be hereafter.