Paper short abstract

This paper analyzes how eco-critical art is exhibited in Japanese museums, focusing on how local museums distinguish themselves from metropolitan institutions by foregrounding regional artistic and industrial histories and addressing their social roles in their exhibition practices.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines how artworks that interrogate the relationship between humans and nature have been embraced by museum exhibitions in Japan over the past decade. It argues that these curatorial practices reflect a growing awareness of local history and context on the part of museums. In recent years, several large museums in metropolitan areas have demonstrated increasing attention to the relationship between human society and the natural environment. Examples include “Our Ecology: Toward a Planetary Living at the Mori Art Museum” (2023–2024) and “Aichi Triennale 2025: A Time between Ashes and Roses” in Aichi Prefecture. The featured artworks can be analyzed through the frameworks of site-specific art and environmental aesthetics, which together suggest an eco-critical turn within art history. In addition, these exhibitions can be understood as responses to rising social concern with climate change and the Anthropocene—that is, the new planetary phase shaped by human activity.

This paper argues, however, that such eco-critical tendencies are not limited to major metropolitan institutions. Local museums are also actively engaging with this trend, particularly by highlighting local artists and re-evaluating regional histories, especially those shaped by industrialization. Examples include “The Coal Mines (Yama) as Depicted: Masao Kikuchi Painting Exhibition” at the Iwaki City Coal and Fossil Museum in Fukushima Prefecture (2025–2026), and “Iron and Art: Traces of Beauty Spun by the Iron City” at the Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art (2026). Drawing on museum studies literature and exhibition discourse analysis, this paper examines how artists and artworks are mobilized within museum exhibitions to fulfill museums’ roles and responsibilities to local communities, and how globally framed eco-critical art intersects with social and local turns in contemporary local museum exhibitions in Japan.