Okinawa Prefectural Museum
 |
|
| Established | 15 May 1975 (opened at new location November 2007) |
|---|---|
| Location | Omoro-machi, Naha, Okinawa, Japan |
| Coordinates | 26°13′36″N 127°41′39″E / 26.226593°N 127.694103°E |
| Type | Prefectural museum |
| Director | Hirotaka Makino |
| Curator | Sachiko Chinen, Satoshi Tanaka (Chief Curators) |
| Public transit access | Omoromachi Station, Okinawa Monorail |
| Website | http://www.museums.pref.okinawa.jp/ |
The Okinawa Prefectural Museum & Art Museum (沖縄県立博物館・美術館 Okinawa Kenritsu Hakubutsukan Bijutsukan?) is a museum in the most southern prefecture of Japan. The museum complex in the Omoro-machi area of Naha, the capital city of Okinawa Prefecture. It opened in November 2007, and includes art, history, and natural history museums focusing specifically on Okinawan topics.
The museum building, constructed largely of local Okinawan limestone, was designed with the imagery of Okinawa's gusuku (castles) in mind. It contains roughly 24,000 square meters of floor space on its four above-ground levels and one basement level. The art museum and history/natural history museum are located on opposite sides of a common lobby, and visitors can buy admission to one or the other, or a combination ticket.
The Okinawa Prefectural Museum was originally established in May 1972, as a matter of course following the end of the US Occupation of Okinawa and its return to Japan, being primarily a renaming and reorganization of the Ryukyu Governmental Museum (琉球政府立博物館) established in 1946. It was based in the Ōnaka-chō neighborhood of Shuri, near Shuri Castle, and was closed in 2007, moving to the new site. The museum in its former incarnation focused upon Okinawan history, natural history, folk life, and related topics. The art museum included on the new site is the first prefectural art museum in Okinawa.
The gardens in front of the museum include reproductions of two traditional-style Okinawan buildings - a thatch-roofed storehouse, and a traditional-style tile-roofed home - along with a number of shisa statues and other items representing Okinawa's tradition of pottery and ceramics. A sculpture garden located behind the museum features large contemporary artworks, and opens onto a large public park, Shintoshin Park.
...
Wikipedia