Yūbari City Museum of Art

The Yubari City Museum of Art is a former art museum located in Yubari, Hokkaido, Japan. Established in 1979, the institution originally served to collect and exhibit works by artists connected to the local area, providing a dedicated space for cultural presentation in the coal mining city. Although the museum has been closed since 2012 following a structural failure, its collection remains intact and is stored in municipal facilities, occasionally appearing in temporary exhibitions elsewhere.

The museum opened in 1979 during the Showa era. Its founding mission was to collect and publish works by writers and artists involved in Yubari's art activities, and to provide a venue for their presentations. In February 2012, during the Heisei era, the museum's roof collapsed under heavy snowfall. The city of Yubari had experienced a severe financial collapse two years prior, in 2007, which left it unable to fund repairs. Consequently, the museum has remained closed since the incident.

The museum's holdings focus on art related to Yubari and the broader Hokkaido region. The collection includes oil paintings, watercolors, books, and three-dimensional works. A particular strength of the collection lies in works that depict the scenery of the local coal mines and the industrial heritage of the area, reflecting the energy that drove Japan's modernization.

Among the notable works in the collection are pieces by Masao Kobayashi and Tetsuo Hatakeyama, who both extensively drew coal mine scenery from Yubari. The collection also features works by Mushio Mushimo, an artist familiar with Takeo Arishima, alongside oil paintings and watercolors by various other writers and artists based in Yubari and Hokkaido.

The museum building is located in Yubari, a city hemmed in by mountains that stretch along a mountain valley in the Sorachi Subprefecture. The region experiences heavy winter snowfall, averaging 172 centimeters in February alone, which directly impacted the structural integrity of the site. In February 2012, the accumulation of heavy snow caused the museum's roof to collapse, rendering the building unusable.

The Yubari City Museum of Art is permanently closed and cannot be visited at its original site. Following the roof collapse, the undamaged collection was relocated to other storage facilities within Yubari city. While the physical museum is nonoperational, the collection remains accessible to the public through temporary exhibitions hosted at other cultural venues, such as the Arishima Takeo Memorial Museum in Niseko. Access to Yubari itself is limited, as the local railway branch line closed in 2019, requiring visitors to the area to rely on bus services or private cars.