Pola Museum of Art

The Pola Museum of Art is a museum located in the Sengokuhara district of Hakone, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. It opened in September 2002 within the Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park to house the private collection of over 9,500 works assembled by the former head of the Pola cosmetics group. The museum is significant for its extensive holdings of French Impressionism and the Ecole de Paris, alongside European paintings of the 19th and 20th centuries, Japanese Western-style painting, glassworks, ceramics, and cosmetic accessories. Its striking architecture, designed by Nikken Sekkei, integrates the structure into the surrounding forested landscape.

The museum is closely tied to the Pola Orbis Holdings cosmetics company, founded in 1929 by Suzuki Shinobu. His son, Suzuki Tsuneshi, developed a corporate philosophy aimed at fostering a peaceful society through the promotion of culture, health, and beauty. This led to the establishment of the Pola Research Institute of Beauty and Culture in 1976 and the Pola Foundation for the Promotion of Traditional Japanese Culture in 1979. In 1996, the Pola Art Foundation was created to support young artists and international cultural exchange. Suzuki Tsuneshi spent over 40 years assembling his art collection of more than 9,500 works, which he entrusted to the Pola Art Foundation to establish the museum. He chose the Hakone site so that the beauty of nature and the artworks could form a symbiosis, inspired by his 1953 visit to the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Construction began in April 2000, led by architect Yasuda Koichi and the firm Nikken Sekkei, and concluded in May 2002. Suzuki Tsuneshi died in November 2000 before its completion, and his nephew Suzuki Satoshi subsequently took leadership of the Pola Art Foundation. The museum officially opened in September 2002.

The collection reflects the personal tastes and interests of its founder, Suzuki Tsuneshi. It encompasses approximately 400 European paintings from the 19th and 20th centuries, with particular strength in French Impressionism and the Ecole de Paris. These Western works are shown alongside Japanese Western-style paintings, creating a dialogue between European movements and the Japanese artists they influenced. Beyond painting, the museum's holdings include sculptures, old Asian and modern Japanese ceramics, glassworks, and a decorative arts section dedicated to both historical and modern cosmetic accessories.

The European painting collection spans from Neoclassicism and Realism to early modern masters. Early 19th-century works include Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres's study Head of a Man for The Apotheosis of Homer, and Hippocrates Refusing the Gifts of the Persian King. Landscape traditions are represented by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot's Girl in a Forest and Return of a Small Herd of Cows, and Gustave Courbet's Snow Effect with Deer, Landscape with Rocks, and The Waves. Honore Daumier's Drinking Hunters and Three Bourgeois, and Eugene Boudin's marine views such as View of the Isle of Tristan, Morning and Shore and Ships at Daoulas mark the transition toward Impressionism. The Ecole de Paris and modern movements are prominently featured with Pablo Picasso's Maternite au bord de l'eau (1902), and Henri Matisse's Promenade dans les oliviers (1905) and Le Luth (1943). Henri Rousseau is represented by multiple works including Le Moulin d'Alfort (circa 1895), View of the Eiffel Tower (1896-1898), Lion in the Jungle (1904), Landscape with Ruins (circa 1906), Charenton-le-Pont (circa 1905-1910), and Eve in the Garden of Eden (circa 1906-1910).

Situated in a forest of 300-year-old beech and camellia trees within Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park, the museum was designed to blend seamlessly into the landscape. Because the site sits below road level, the architects created a five-story structure that largely descends into the earth. A seismic isolation system features a subterranean concrete funnel made of multiple rings with an upper diameter of 74 meters. The building is suspended within this shell at 16 load-bearing points on rubber supports, with two and a half floors underground and two and a half above. Above ground, the building reaches only eight meters in height. Visitors cross a bridge from the road into a small entrance pavilion on the top floor, then descend via escalators through an atrium to lower levels housing galleries, a lecture hall, museum shop, cafe, and restaurant. The architecture received the DuPont Benedictus Award in 2003. In 2013, the museum added the Pola Museum of Art Nature Trail, a 670-meter hiking path allowing guests to experience the surrounding national park scenery.

The Pola Museum of Art is located in the Sengokuhara area of Hakone, Kanagawa Prefecture, along Prefectural Route 733 between the Gora and Sengokuhara districts. It is operated by the Pola Art Foundation. The museum maintains an active presence with a multilingual official website providing visitor information.