“Art is like a medicine that gives vitality to the heart. Take this on a larger scale, and you have a museum. If a hospital is an institution that fights illness and restores people’s lives, then a museum is a hospital for the heart. Put even one painting inside a house, and the effect is like taking a good vitamin every day.”*

Loving beauty, painter Genichiro Inokuma (1902-93) studied beauty and sought to express it, all his life. Believing in beauty’s power to heal and enliven the human heart, he displayed the beauty he himself created in places open to many people, from a sincere desire to help the world’s people in their daily lives. Then, if even one good painting hung in a house, Inokuma believed, residents would benefit enormously simply from seeing it every day. If a museum was like a “hospital,” he reasoned, then a painting in a house was like a “vitamin pill.” He furthermore gave constant attention to his way of living and valued his own lifestyle, immensely.
Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary art has newly reopened after renovation work to ensure the museum a long building life. On this occasion, we are returning to our beginnings to reaffirm Genichiro Inokuma’s views on the role of art and his methods of giving beauty to daily life with his artworks. Establishing three sections—"Inokuma’s Way of Living,” “Introducing Beauty in a Private Space,” and “Public Art”—we reproduce the kitchen/living room of Inokuma’s late-period Denenchofu house and demonstrate the use of his artworks in orchestrating a lifestyle. We also feature examples of Inokuma-design furniture and wrapping paper, and take a present-day look at his foremost works of public art.

*Interview: Genichiro Inokuma with Yoshiko Morita, “Painters Need to Live a Long Time,” Aji no Techo, September 1982 issue