Aboriginal Art Japan - Collections, Museums and Buy Online

Japan has one of the longest and most serious engagements with Australian Aboriginal art of any country in Asia. Japanese anthropologists and museum curators were among the first outside Australia to study and exhibit Aboriginal art as a significant cultural and artistic form, and several major Japanese institutions hold important collections. Here is a guide to Aboriginal art in Japan.

National Museum of Ethnology (Minpaku) - Osaka

The National Museum of Ethnology, known as Minpaku, in Expo Commemoration Park in Suita, Osaka, is one of the world's largest ethnographic museums and home to a significant collection of Aboriginal Australian material. Minpaku hosted a major exhibition of Aboriginal art in 1992, drawing on research by museum staff who had conducted extensive field research in Aboriginal communities in Australia from the 1980s. The museum's permanent exhibition begins in Oceania, placing Aboriginal Australian culture at the opening of its world tour of human civilisation. The collection holds approximately 345,000 items from cultures around the world, with Aboriginal Australian works among its most significant holdings.

National Museum of Modern Art - Tokyo and Kyoto

The National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo and the National Museum of Modern Art Kyoto both hosted major exhibitions of Aboriginal art in 1992, bringing the work to audiences in Japan's two most significant art centres simultaneously. These exhibitions were among the first to present Aboriginal painting within a contemporary art context in Japan rather than an ethnographic one - a significant shift in how the work was understood and received.

Kobe City Museum

The Kobe City Museum hosted an exhibition of Aboriginal art in 1986, one of the earliest presentations of the work in Japan. The exhibition drew primarily on works from Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory and introduced Aboriginal art to a generation of Japanese collectors and art professionals.

Japan's earliest engagement with Aboriginal art

Japan's relationship with Aboriginal art reaches back to 1965, when the first Aboriginal art exhibition held outside Australia was staged in Tokyo, organised by the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper. The exhibition presented bark paintings and sculptures from Arnhem Land and Kimberley and had a lasting impact on Japanese anthropologists and collectors. It remains one of the earliest examples of Aboriginal art being shown to an international public audience anywhere in the world.

Buy original Aboriginal art online - shipping to Japan

Art by Farquhar is an Australian specialist gallery for Central Desert and APY Lands art, with free worldwide shipping to Japan. Based in Edwardstown, South Australia, the gallery works directly with artists and their families from communities including Willowra, Yuendumu, Utopia, Ernabella and Watarru. All works come with a Certificate of Authenticity.

Browse the full collection and order online with free shipping to Japan at