Since ancient times, Oita Prefecture has cultivated its own unique culture and customs due to the mixture of various people and different cultures within the prefecture. This mixture resulted from encounters with foreign cultures, such as with the spread of religious culture in the Usa and Kunisaki region, contact with Western European culture due to the increase of trade with Spain and Portugal, the flourishing Nanga school of painting from the late Edo Period to the Taisho period, and so on.

In the newly-created Oita Prefectural Art Museum’s opening exhibition, OPAM presents to the world an art museum of Oita and the world, “Oita World Museum,” a blend of encounters unique to Oita, based on this fertile cultural ground of Oita Prefecture. There will be pieces that symbolize the culture of Oita, masterpieces from well-known museums from around the world, and various pieces from representative Japanese museums.

The exhibition contains over 200 carefully selected pieces from domestic museums and private collections, and features art pieces with an undercurrent of “modernity,” with paintings, sculptures, craft pieces, and photos that span from the Momoyama Period to the modern day. With this exhibition, OPAM has created a space that crosses the boundaries of time, region, or genre. These “encounters” will be an opportunity to question the individual merits of each of the artworks collected in Oita, and to re-affirm the origins of this art, as well as simultaneously inspiring new fascination. Furthermore, each of the “encounters” enjoyed by visitors to OPAM will give visitors the opportunity of experiencing the re-discovery Oita’s cultural climate and the joy of encountering different cultures.