The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto was established on its present site on March 1, 1963, initially as the Annex Museum of the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo. The museum occupied the restored auxiliary building of the Kyoto Municipal Exhibition Hall for Industrial Affairs, transferred from Kyoto City to the national museum system. This event gave Kyoto a dedicated national platform for twentieth-century art and design, with particular attention to Kyoto, Kansai, and western Japan. The institution later became the independent National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto in 1967, and in 1986 moved into a new Fumihiko Maki-designed building. Its early March 1 establishment is important because it anchored modern Japanese art, craft, nihonga, yoga, printmaking, sculpture, and photography within a national museum framework outside Tokyo.
It strengthened Kyoto's role as a national center for modern Japanese art and craft scholarship.