Five years after opening its doors in February 2022, the Nakanoshima Museum of Art, Osaka is taking stock of its collection with an all-star anniversary show. Titled "Nakanoshima Museum of Art All-Stars: We Always Wanted to See Them Together!" the exhibition runs from 10 April to 19 July 2027 in the museum's fifth-floor galleries, presenting a selection of highlights from holdings that have grown from roughly 6,000 works at opening to around 7,000 today.

The show is framed as a chance to revisit the collection — the core of the museum's activity — at a milestone moment. Many of the works have yet to be exhibited at all, while others are the familiar faces that have represented the museum in exhibitions at home and abroad since its preparation-room days. Among the headline names are Amedeo Modigliani, René Magritte, Yuzo Saeki and Jiro Yoshihara, alongside Osaka-connected artists including Katsuyuki Nabei, Tatekoto Suga, Kanjiro Ikejima, Shigeru Izumi, Sonen Shimada and Eiko Yamazawa.

Saeki, one of the museum's pillars, gets special attention. The museum's Saeki holdings trace back to a 1983 donation by businessman Hatsujiro Yamamoto of about 600 works including 31 by the painter, and the institution has continued acquiring his work ever since. The anniversary exhibition will give the first public showing to a Saeki painting acquired in 2025 — "Petit Restaurant" (1927) — a new star in the lineup.

Two monumental works round out the billing. Frank Stella's "First Sword and Last Broom" (1986), withheld from display for decades due to its size and installation difficulty, returns to view for the first time since 1995 — a gap of 32 years. And Pino Pascali's large-scale installation "Sea" (1966), four metres wide and six deep, receives its first public showing since entering the collection. The exhibition is organised by the museum with the Yomiuri Shimbun and MBS, with support from Dai Nippon Printing.