Kiyotsu Warehouse Museum

Kiyotsu Warehouse Museum was established in 2015 as a branch of the Echigo-Tsumari Satoyama Museum of Contemporary Art Kinare. Based on the site of a large sports hall of the former Kiyotsukyo Elementary School, which closed in 2009, the building now serves as both exhibition space and storage space for art works. This museum is one of three examples of how Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale 2015 has renovated and revitalized former primary schools under the theme of “Exchange Between Cities and Locales”. Kiyotsu Warehouse Museum tackles key issues being faced between the city and the local area: the lack of spaces in urban areas for artists to show their work and the difficulty of increasing numbers of abandoned houses and schools in the shrinking population of the Echigo-Tsumari area. This new art museum attempts to resolve these problems by providing a space where visitors can always appreciate more than two hundred artworks even in the off-season or off-years between the Echigo-Tsumari Triennales.