The 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa has opened the last exhibition it will stage before a long closure for renovation. "From Today to Tomorrow: On the Stewardship of a Work" runs from 31 October 2026 to 18 April 2027; the museum will then shut in May 2027 and is scheduled to reopen in March 2028. Rather than a farewell survey, the show turns to the unglamorous work of keeping art alive, asking what it means to pass contemporary works on to the next twenty years.

The exhibition centres on works from the collection that need ongoing care, displaying the pieces together with the research, repairs and equipment upgrades that sustain them. Among the works built into the museum since it opened in 2004 are James Turrell's "Blue Planet Sky" and Patrick Blanc's living wall, "Green Bridge". Kenji Yanobe's "Viva Revival Project: Stand-Up" returns to motion after extensive repairs, while a theatre piece by Chiharu Shiota and Toshiki Okada, "About a Room of Memory", is restaged by different performers across the run. Guest artists Kenta Ishige, Sen Takahashi and Miyu Hosoi contribute new work.

The show's title plays on a double meaning: "today" points both to the present moment and to the two decades since the museum opened, while "tomorrow" looks to the twenty years after it reopens. With more than 4,000 works in its collection, including video, sound, participatory and performance-based pieces, the museum faces practical questions: how to conserve a work that depends on obsolete technology, a living plant wall, or a performance that must be re-enacted.

A free symposium, "Things That Break Down, Things That Are Passed Down", takes place on 14 November, with restorer Kaori Taguchi and artist Sen Takahashi discussing conservation and support for the Noto region. Admission to the exhibition is 1,200 yen for adults, 800 yen for university students and 400 yen for high-school students and younger. The show frames stewardship not as backstage maintenance but as the museum's central mission as it prepares to hand its collection to the future.