The Okinawa Museum & Art Museum is a multi-purpose complex in which visitors can gain rich experiences of Okinawa’s distinctive natural, historical, cultural, and artistic worlds.

This museum is unique within Japan in that it features two museums — a 博物館・Hakubutsu-kan (Natural, Historical, and Cultural Museum) and 美術館・Bijutsu-kan (Art Museum) — all in one location. 

The Blue Wing of the Museum — featuring natural science, historical, and cultural exhibits — is to the west of the main lobby. The Red Wing of the Museum is the Art Museum and it is to the east of the main lobby.

One of the predecessors of the Okinawa Prefectural Museum & Art Museum was the Higashi Onna Museum. It was established in 1946 by the Okinawa Civilian Administration shortly after the Battle of Okinawa. The year 2016 marked the museum’s 70th anniversary. 

The information exhibited at the Museum draws from its vast collection of materials and considers Okinawa’s distinctiveness from a wide range of disciplinary lenses, including geology, biology, anthropology, archaeology, history, folklore, and arts and crafts. The museum regularly holds events highlighting different aspects of its impressive collection.

The Art Museum mainly features — but is not entirely limited to — modern and contemporary works of art nurtured by the distinctive aspects of Okinawa. In the Art Museum, you will see a wide range of media on display, including oil and watercolor paintings, sculptures, prints, photographs, and videos.

The Okinawa Museum & Art Museum holds the largest collection in the prefecture.

As of 2017, the Museum houses approximately 94,000 objects. The Art Museum has 3,700 pieces of artwork.

The collection continues to expand annually. 

As a reflection of the systematic and regular expansion of their collections, the Museums periodically hold exhibitions featuring newly acquired items: The Newly Acquired Artifacts Exhibition (Museum) and the New Collection Series (Art Museum).

The objects and artwork that visitors see on display reflect only a small fraction of the entire museum collection. Most items are carefully kept in storage. 

It is sometimes considered that a primary function of the museum, rivaling its public-facing displays on the main gallery floors, is the safekeeping of important cultural, historical, and scientific materials. Considering a museum from this perspective, it can be said that one of the most important functions of the museum can be found in its “backyard”. 

As such, the museum periodically gives “Backyard Tours” where curators will guide visitors through the back storage areas of the museum — areas normally kept hidden from the general public. These types of events are held once a month at the Museum and 4 to 5 times a year at the Art Museum.

Okinawa Prefectural Museum & Art Museum’s Yuimui gift shop offers a variety of museum-exclusive goods and is the perfect place to find original items from Okinawa.

Yuimui is located on the first floor of the museum. Please stop by and select a few Okinawan souvenirs to take home with you!

Yuimui carries exhibit catalogs and originally developed goods related to the most current exhibitions, unique Okinawan craft and folk art products, model craft kits that parents and children can build at home together, a wide variety of insightful books about Okinawa, and much more. 

Because of the limitations of space, many of the objects and artworks on display behind protective glass can only partially be shown.

Where can you go if you want to gain more in-depth knowledge about a specific piece of art or historical object that you saw in an exhibition? What if you want to see the designs of an ornately decorated vessel in better detail, or learn about scrolls that are over 10 meters in length when unrolled?

Visitors are invited to stop by and visit the Media Center to learn more.

In the Media Center, located near the front information desk, visitors will be able to find a wide range of information related to their inquiry or exploration. By visiting the Media Center, the visitor has the opportunity to learn more details about a specific item of interest as well as discover new information that is not always easy to discern when just looking at an object on the exhibition floor.

Furthermore, visitors can browse through the multiple resources available in the Media Center, including catalogs of past exhibitions, introductions to research bulletins, databases of both the Museum and Art Museum collections, and other Okinawa-related books and videos.

In addition, the Art Museum web page has a fun, interactive “Timeline of Modern and Contemporary Okinawan Art” where visitors can learn more about Okinawan art, artists, and art history.

The Okinawa Prefectural Museum & Art Museum has a room where you are encouraged to touch items and have fun, hands-on, interactive learning experiences with materials related to Okinawa’s nature, history, and culture.

In the Touch and Experience (Hands-On)  Room, visitors can choose from 37 different “experience kits” to encourage learning through hands-on interaction. These kits provide a gateway to learn more about Okinawa’s natural world and to gain cultural experience and wisdom from previous generations.

In the Touch and Experience (Hands-On) Room, you can….

   … Learn more about the animals in Okinawa by discovering their “field signs” (nest traces, animal tracks/paw prints, feces, food traces, etc.)

   … Experience the lightness and airiness of wearing a traditional Okinawan bashofu (banana fiber) cloth kimono.

   … Play a sanshin, the traditional Okinawan three-stringed instrument.

This room is NOT only for children. Adults are encouraged to learn through play, too, and have fun while engaging in hands-on experiences!

The Touch and Experience (Hands-On) room also regularly holds workshops on the weekends where children and their parents can have fun together building things like traditional handmade Okinawan toys.

Through utilization of dynamic videos and the display of real-life objects and replicas, the Museum seeks to communicate its main theme: Sea and Island Life — Seeking Prosperity, Beauty, and Peace. 

This is Okinawa’s unique cultural and natural message that the Museum wants to convey to the world.

The five subsections of the permanent exhibit in the Museum are arranged according to their respective themes and include: Natural History, Archaeology, Arts & Crafts, History, and Folklore.

The Art Museum exhibits works of modern and contemporary art from Japan and other Asian nations with a focus on artists who are from or who have connections with Okinawa.

The museum’s special exhibits and permanent collection exhibits periodically rotate based on developing themes, allowing visitors to enjoy new materials and artwork every time they visit.