National Museum of Western Art being designated as a World Cultural Heritage Site
Tha National Museum of Western Art (NMWA) in Ueno Park in Taito-kum Tokyo was designated as a World Vultural Heritage Site at the UNESCO’s committee in Turkey on Jul.17th.(http://www.nmwa.go.jp/en/)
NMWS was establish in 1959 and designed by Le Corbusier ,a Swiss architect who was said to be “the grand master of 20 century’s modern architecture”.
NMWA contains various western art works especially modern or 20 centurys masterpieces and the basic collections are of “Matsukata Collections”. KOjiro Matuskata was a influential business person running major businesses in Meji -early Showa era and collected more than 10 thousand works mainly fron Europe, but some of them were lost in condusions of wars. Still France gave back some of his lost art properties and thus the museum was able to start with old collections. This time, NMWA has become the “first” buildings to be registered as a heritage site, “first” jointly registerated site of more trhan one country (transborder site) ,and “first” such a site in the area of central area of Tokyo (in the scope of the 23 wards of the city). For those remarkable points, the museum is expected to draw attention of a lot of tourists even more from now on.