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A collection focusing on design

The core of the museum collection is derived from educational materials used by the university’s forerunner, Kyoto College of Technology opened in 1902. Exhibitions are held six to eight times a year to show the pieces, which are open to the general public.
The collection is built up of a diverse range of arts in Japan and from overseas, including paintings, sculptures, metalworks, lacquer works, ceramics, dyed fabrics and antiquities. In particular, the museum focuses on the accumulation of posters, and, at present, has some 20,000 pieces. Here, the cornerstones of the poster collection – mostly art nouveau and art deco - were collected by the artist Chu Asai in France and the architect Goichi Takeda in Germany (both faculty members at the college in its early days). The collection also includes posters by Mucha and Lautrec, and the poster for the First Secession Exhibition by Klimt.
Additions to the collection in recent years include architectural plans donated by the architect Togo Murano and some 190 radios from the 1920s to 70s donated by the poet Shuntaro Tanigawa.