Tate Turner Exhibition Opens October 24 at the National Museum of Western Art; More Than 80 Works from Tate Shown Alongside Contemporary Art

The exhibition “Tate Turner: Painting the Sublime, a Dialogue with Contemporary Art” opened at the National Museum of Western Art (Ueno, Tokyo) on Saturday, October 24, 2026. It runs until Sunday, February 21, 2027, and is organized by the museum, Tate and others. The retrospective presents more than 80 works by J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851) from the Tate collection, including oil paintings and watercolors. Shown alongside works by postwar and contemporary artists such as Olafur Eliasson, it explores how concerns resonate across eras.

Highlights of the Turner exhibition

2025 marked the 250th anniversary of Turner’s birth. According to the museum’s description, Turner painted shifting light and atmosphere, stormy seas and skies. He also depicted the steam and smoke that humans began to emit during the Industrial Revolution, sometimes in vivid detail and sometimes in abstracted form. In Britain, Tate organizes the Turner Prize, a contemporary art award named after him.

The exhibition regroups the works by theme and arranges them in loose chronological order. Eliasson’s work draws attention to climate change, an issue said to have its origins in the Industrial Revolution. Through a video work by The Otolith Group, the exhibition critically recalls Western colonialism and the slave trade.

Toward the end, works by the American Abstract Expressionist painters Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman are placed alongside Turner’s paintings. Both were discussed in connection with the concept of the “abstract sublime.” The museum says the exhibition also addresses issues such as decolonization in art and a rethinking of capitalism.

Structure and main works

The exhibition consists of a prologue and seven chapters. The chapter titles and the main works introduced for each chapter on the official exhibition website are as follows (all in the Tate collection except Katie Paterson’s work).

• Prologue “The Dark Room”: Turner, “Moonlight, a Study at Millbank” (exhibited 1797); Katie Paterson, “Totality” (2016, collection of the artist)

• Chapter 1 “First Steps, from the British Landscape”: Turner, “Morning amongst the Coniston Fells, Cumberland” (exhibited 1798); Richard Long, “Red Slate Circle” (1988)

• Chapter 2 “Into the Mountains”: Turner, “The Fall of an Avalanche in the Grisons” (exhibited 1810); Olafur Eliasson, “The glacier melt series 1999/2019” (2019)

• Chapter 3 “The Historical Sublime”: Turner, “Bacchus and Ariadne” (exhibited 1840)

• Chapter 4 “Venice, City of the Sublime”: Turner, “Venice – Maria della Salute” (exhibited 1844)

• Chapter 5 “Stormy Seas”: Turner, “Hurrah! for the Whaler Erebus! Another Fish!” (exhibited 1846); The Otolith Group, “Hydra Decapita” (2010)

• Chapter 6 “Contemplation, Gazing at the Sea and Sky”: Turner, “Seascape with Buoy” (c. 1840)

• Chapter 7 “The Elemental Sublime: The Question of Late Turner”: Turner, “Rough Sea with Dolphins” (c. 1835–40); Mark Rothko, “Untitled” (1969)

The “Highlights” section of the official website also names Peter Doig, Howard Hodgkin, Lisa Milroy, Cornelia Parker and Wolfgang Tillmans. The exhibition will travel to the Nakanoshima Museum of Art, Osaka, and Jessica Warboys’s work will be shown only at the Osaka venue.

Tickets, prices and how to avoid crowds

Same-day tickets cost 2,400 yen for adults, 1,500 yen for university students and 1,100 yen for high school students. Advance tickets cost 2,200 yen for adults, 1,300 yen for university students and 900 yen for high school students. Tickets are sold through the exhibition’s online ticket service (etix), Rakuten Travel, Seven Ticket, ArtSticker and other outlets. Admission is free for junior high school students and younger, and for holders of a disability certificate and one companion.

From Wednesday, November 4 to Thursday, November 19, admission is free for university and high school students, who simply need to bring their student ID to the museum’s ticket counter. From Saturday, October 24 to Sunday, November 8, visitors aged 65 and over receive 400 yen off an adult ticket by showing ID at the ticket counter. There is a reciprocal discount with the Tokyo National Museum’s special exhibition “Daitokuji: Japan’s Unrivaled Zen Temple” and the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum’s “What a Wonderful World: Masterworks from the Musée d’Orsay.” Showing a ticket stub or similar from either exhibition at the ticket counter gets you 100 yen off a same-day ticket.

Manga artist Shinichi Sakamoto drew a new manga, “Icarus’s Brush” (47 pages), for the exhibition. A limited special set ticket (3,500 yen) that includes a book containing the manga and a special interview is sold through Seven Ticket. The audio guide costs 700 yen (cash only) and is narrated by Yuta Koseki. At the Tokyo venue, the guide is not offered as an app; devices are lent at the venue.

Opening hours are 9:30 to 17:30, until 20:00 on Fridays and Saturdays (last entry 30 minutes before closing). The ticket information does not mention timed-entry reservations, and when it is crowded it may take time to get from purchase to entry at the museum’s ticket counter. Tickets from etix and ArtSticker are used by showing the QR code or a printed ticket screen. On the day of your visit you can also see the permanent collection, but the permanent collection galleries will be closed from Tuesday, January 12 to Sunday, February 21, 2027.

Overview

Name: Tate Turner: Painting the Sublime, a Dialogue with Contemporary Art
Dates: Saturday, October 24, 2026 – Sunday, February 21, 2027
Hours: 9:30–17:30 (until 20:00 on Fridays and Saturdays; last entry 30 minutes before closing)
Closed: Mondays (open on Monday, November 23 and Monday, January 11, 2027, both national holidays), Tuesday, November 24, Monday, December 28 – Friday, January 1, 2027 (national holiday), and Tuesday, January 12
Venue: National Museum of Western Art, Special Exhibition Galleries
Address: 7-7 Ueno-koen, Taito-ku, Tokyo
Access: 1-minute walk from JR Ueno Station (Park Exit), 7-minute walk from Keisei Ueno Station, 8-minute walk from Ueno Station on the Tokyo Metro Ginza and Hibiya lines
Admission: Same-day tickets: adults 2,400 yen, university students 1,500 yen, high school students 1,100 yen. Advance tickets: adults 2,200 yen, university students 1,300 yen, high school students 900 yen. Free for junior high school students and younger, among others
Organizers: National Museum of Western Art, Tate, The Asahi Shimbun, TV Asahi
Inquiries: 050-5541-8600 (Hello Dial)
Official website: https://turner2026-27.exhibit.jp/
*Information as of October 19, 2026. Please check the official website for the latest information.

*Top image: J.M.W. Turner, “Rough Sea with Wreckage” (detail), c. 1840–45, oil on canvas, Tate. Photo: Tate (from a press release by The Chain Museum Inc.)

*This article was compiled by the TOKYO ART SPHERE editorial team based on information from the official websites of the organizers, including the National Museum of Western Art (as of October 19, 2026).

Text: TOKYO ART SPHERE Editorial Team