Sompo Museum of Art

The Sompo Museum of Art is a corporate art museum in Shinjuku, Tokyo, owned by the Japanese insurance company SOMPO. Located in the Nishi-Shinjuku district next to the company's headquarters, the museum traces its origins to 1976 and has grown from a single-floor gallery in a skyscraper to a purpose-built six-storey institution completed in 2020. Its international reputation was secured by its 1987 acquisition of one of Vincent van Gogh's Sunflowers paintings, then the highest price ever paid at auction for a painting.

The museum was founded in 1976 by the insurance company Yasuda Fire & Marine Insurance, which sought to create a cultural attraction for its new corporate headquarters in Shinjuku. The Japanese painter Seiji Tōgō was instrumental in its establishment, donating his personal art collection of more than 200 of his own works and over 250 pieces by other Japanese and foreign artists. The museum opened in June 1976 as the Seiji Togo Art Museum on the 42nd floor of the corporate high-rise, offering visitors both art and panoramic views of Tokyo. The institution underwent several name changes reflecting corporate mergers: it became the Seiji Togo Memorial Yasuda Kasai Museum of Art in April 1987, then the Sompo Japan Seiji Togo Museum of Art in 2002 following the merger of Yasuda Fire & Marine and Nissan Fire & Marine into Sompo Japan. From September 2014 it was known as the Seiji Togo Memorial Sompo Japan Nipponkoa Museum of Art, before adopting its current name, Sompo Museum of Art, in April 2020. In July 2020 the museum moved into its new six-storey building adjacent to the SOMPO headquarters.

The museum holds more than 650 artworks with a pronounced emphasis on modern and contemporary art from Japan, Europe, and North America. The collection is anchored by the Seiji Tōgō bequest, comprising over 200 of his works spanning 1914 to 1977, including more than 70 oil paintings, drawings, lithographs, sculptures, and tapestries. Tōgō's oeuvre in the collection demonstrates his engagement with Western modernism, from Cubist-influenced works such as Contrabass Player (1915) and Village Festival (1923), painted during a stay in Paris, through surrealist works from around 1930, to late paintings such as Nostalgia (1959) and Rio de Janeiro (1977). The collection also preserves works Tōgō gathered by other artists, including Kenzo Okada, Kigen Nakagawa, and Saburo Miyamoto. Additional Japanese artists represented include Tsuguharu Foujita, Ryūsei Kishida, Togyu Okumura, and Kayo Yamaguchi. Among Western holdings, the museum is distinguished by its 33 works by the American painter Grandma Moses, as well as individual pieces by Pablo Picasso, Georges Rouault, and Marc Chagall. The museum also holds two paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir: Bather and Girl with a Hat.

The museum's most celebrated acquisition occurred on 30 March 1987, when it paid 5.8 billion yen (approximately £25 million) at Christie's in London for Vincent van Gogh's Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers, shattering the previous auction record for a painting, which had been 1.95 billion yen (£8.2 million) for Mantegna's Adoration of the Magi. The painting has remained in the collection ever since. Between 1987 and 1990 the museum acquired two additional major works at auction: Paul Gauguin's L'Allée des Alyscamps, Arles and Paul Cézanne's Pommes et Serviette. These three paintings are displayed together in a dedicated room, protected from the visitor area by a large pane of security glass; they are the only works on permanent display, while other collection pieces are shown in rotating exhibitions.

The museum's current building is a six-storey structure completed in 2020, situated directly beside the Sompo Japan Head Office Building in Nishi-Shinjuku. This replaced the original location on the 42nd floor of the corporate headquarters, where the museum had operated since its 1976 founding. The new building provides dedicated exhibition space for the expanded collection and rotating exhibition program.

The Sompo Museum of Art is located in Nishi-Shinjuku, Shinjuku, Tokyo, adjacent to the SOMPO corporate headquarters. The museum is operated by the Sompo Japan Fine Art Foundation, a public interest incorporated foundation affiliated with the SOMPO insurance group. The institution continues its corporate patronage model while serving as a public cultural facility. It maintains an active exhibition program that has included both collection-based shows and major loan exhibitions of Western art, and annually awards the Seiji Togo Memorial Sompo Japan Museum of Art Grand Prix to a contemporary artist, with whom the museum organizes a solo exhibition.