What Singapore can learn from Art Week Tokyo’s move beyond the art fair to longer-term gains

TOKYO – Held in Japan’s oldest private art museum dating from 1917,

Art Week Tokyo

’s (AWT) packed centrepiece exhibition was its gravitational centre.

Titled AWT Focus, the show – held from Nov 5 to 9 – brought together works from across sprawling Tokyo’s siloed art scene, as well as global art from Amsterdam to Zurich.

AWT co-founder and director Atsuko Ninagawa said the flagship selling platform was inspired by her visit to Singapore’s gallery-initiated boutique art fair S.E.A. Focus.

The tightly curated selling platform focused on South-east Asia was started by STPI – Creative Workshop & Gallery.

Ms Ninagawa was inspired to create a similar initiative that could benefit Tokyo by connecting galleries together via common issues in art history and by educating collectors, who are often not as cognisant of art history when purchasing art.

“AWT Focus is a way to share that narrative and discourse with collectors, so that they know what they are buying and can be responsible for what they are buying,” she said.

S.E.A. Focus, which started in 2019, was then thrust into the spotlight when

the annual tentpole fair Art Stage Singapore was abruptly cancelled.

Just as well that Ms Ninagawa – the owner and director of Tokyo-based gallery Take Ninagawa was recently named the 62nd most influential person in the art world by London-based ArtReview magazine – launched the annual AWT in 2021 as a way to invent a model beyond the mega art fair and its accompanying “fairtigue”.

In an interview with The Straits Times and other international media during the recent fourth edition of AWT, Ms Ninagawa said she started AWT as a response to the dearth of platforms for private and public galleries to interact, which she saw as important for the long-term synergy of Japan’s growing art scene.

“I thought that if we got together and shared what we have, then we could also encourage the market to be a little bolder,” she said.

AWT Focus, curated for the first time by an international curator – Polish curator and critic Adam Szymczyk – was also gradually expanding its ambitions.

What started as a platform to bring together Japanese art history now placed the concerns of artists represented by Tokyo’s galleries – a reckoning of realism’s role in Japanese war propaganda, for example – in conversation with international artists.

With S.E.A. Focus to be organised by the major art fair company The Art Assembly’s Art SG from 2026 and

galleries concerned about the dilution of the boutique fair’s identity

, Ms Ninagawa would say only that Ms Emi Eu – STPI’s executive director, who will remain as S.E.A. Focus’ artistic consultant – “has the best interest of S.E.A. Focus in mind”.

Post-pandemic,

new art fairs such as Singapore’s Art SG, Frieze Seoul and Yokohama’s Tokyo Gendai

have been looking to tap Asia’s growing art market – although Taipei Dangdai recently cancelled its 2026 edition.

But Ms Ninagawa, who emphasised she does not see AWT as purely a market platform, wants to promote the longer-term synergies of Tokyo’s art scene.

The energetic young art event backed by its experimentalist director holds some lessons for Singapore, which will be hosting the 14th edition of Singapore Art Week (SAW) from Jan 22 to 31, 2026.

Experimenting with local solutions and alternative formats

AWT’s experiment to offer seven free citywide bus routes emphasised exploration over convenience.

This demonstrated that alternative models beyond the art fair can attract backing from major players such as Art Basel to support an art event with its VIP network of collectors and art movers.

Mr Vincenzo de Bellis, chief artistic officer and global director of Art Basel fairs, said the company valued AWT’s “ability to create deep, localised engagement and to showcase the diversity and richness of the Japanese art scene”.

He added that Art Basel had no long-term plans to organise new art fairs in Asia –

Art Basel Hong Kong

continues to be its sole flagship event in the region – but the company was “open to opportunities that align with our global mission to strengthen the art ecosystem in Asia”.

He still believed that art fairs are a “cornerstone of the global art market”, but also acknowledged the importance of supporting “complementary formats that foster local engagement and cultural exchange”.

Gallerist Naoki Nakatani, director of space Un Tokyo, said: “We value that the event expands across the entire city – Tokyo itself becomes a living art platform.”

The gallery’s first participation in AWT in 2025 was rewarded with a 30 per cent increase in visitors. Mr Nakatani praised the format and added that deep and rich engagement with gallerists and collectors “can be difficult within the concentrated, on-site structure of an art fair”.

Galleries, which submit an application to a selection committee, did not pay a fee to be part of the bus routes, said Ms Ninagawa. This amounts to considerable cost savings that would have otherwise been spent on exhibitor and set-up fees at an art fair.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government supported the infrastructure of AWT, although it declined to share the details of its financial support.

Meanwhile, AWT Focus participants paid a nominal fee per work to participate in the curated central show. Ms Ninagawa emphasised that as AWT was not profit-making, the fees paid all go back into the production of the exhibition.

Striking a balance between curation and independence

In a world of cookie-cutter and homogeneous art weeks, AWT stood out for striking a balance between centrally curated platforms and a network of shows independently conceived of by museum and gallery curators.

AWT Focus played a big part in keeping the otherwise disparate week focused and was supported by other curated platforms such as AWT Video, a slate of video work centred on rituals curated by Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo’s curator Keiko Okamura.

AWT also looked beyond the world of contemporary art to commission a multidisciplinary pop-up bar which served as the week’s social space.

In 2025, for example, architect Ichio Matsuzawa and executive chef Shinobu Namae of three-Michelin-starred French restaurant L’Effervescence in Tokyo were commissioned to design the bar. This was in addition to three Japanese artists and collectives who dreamt up cocktails inspired by their practice.

SAW, which does not have a central curator or festival director and lists more than 100 events in recent editions, could benefit from such curation.

Focusing on furthering local art narratives

Museums pulled out all the stops to stage exhibitions that further international understanding of Japanese art history during the week.

Major art institutions in Singapore too can potentially time exhibitions focused on Singapore artists for art week, encouraging international visitors to understand the country’s place in art history.

At the National Art Centre, Tokyo (NACT), the exhibition Prism Of The Real – Making Art In Japan (1989 – 2010) explored the aftermath of Japan’s “lost decades”, a period of economic stagnation that also shaped art history.

The NACT received its highest number of visitors at AWT in 2025 after four years of participation.

Bringing together international artists such as South Korean artist Lee Bul and curated by Hong Kong museum M+’s artistic director and chief curator Doryun Chong, the show offered international perspectives on Japanese art. This helped collectors to understand the place of their art collection within a broader history.

On show at Mori Art Museum was a retrospective of Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto’s global building projects. It was a timely show, given that he stepped into the limelight in 2025 for being the designer of the grand ring, the world’s largest wooden structure, at the Osaka Expo 2025.

For the 2026 edition of AWT, Ms Ninagawa said there will be a collaboration with the Vienna-based Curated By gallery festival, where galleries based in the Austrian capital invite international curators to respond to a yearly changing theme.

Ultimately, Ms Ninagawa believes “every art scene has to produce events that make sense for the local conditions”.

Citing AWT’s free bus infrastructure, she said the model might not make sense in cities where galleries are clustered together or in a city with frequent traffic jams.

“I think that, rather than sharing a specific model, AWT can offer an example of critical thinking or problem-solving that is attuned to both global expectations and local necessities.”

The journalist’s visit was sponsored by Art Week Tokyo.