Aichi Art Museums and Gender Balance – As revealed by When Two Collections Meet

This is a review of the exhibition When Two Collections Meet organized jointly by the Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art and Aichi Prefectural Ceramic Museum, paying particular attention to Chapter 2 ‘Woman Made’, devoted exclusively to work by female artists, and touching also on the distinguishing features of Aichi Prefecture in the Japanese context, and circumstances behind the establishment of prefectural art museums. The discussion covers local-authority–art-museum relationships, plus issues and recent developments with regard to the social status and evaluation of female artists.