Exhibition preview·Hakone
Japan's Pola Museum pairs its 19 Monets with contemporary artists in new show
The Pola Museum of Art in Hakone has opened 'The New Vision: Monet and the Contemporary Gaze', placing its collection of 19 Monet paintings — the largest in Asia — in dialogue with works by more than 20 modern and contemporary artists. The show runs until 7 April 2027.
The Pola Museum of Art in Hakone has become one of Japan's most active institutional buyers over the past decade, acquiring works by Gerhard Richter, Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Wolfgang Tillmans. Its new exhibition draws on those purchases to set 19 Monet paintings — spanning 1872 to 1908, from the Seine and Saint-Lazare scenes to the Water Lilies — alongside contemporary artists including Gonzalez-Torres, Tillmans, Roni Horn, Pierre Huyghe and Fujiko Nakaya. Rather than a chronological survey, the museum says it wants contemporary artists to serve as 'another set of eyes' through which Monet can be reconsidered from a 21st-century perspective. The show examines shared questions of perception, memory and landscape.
