Glanz der Kaiser von China: Kunst und Leben in der Verbotenen Stadt, 2012, © Foto: Malinka

Goldene Impressionen: Japanische Malerei 1400-1900, 2011, © Foto: Malinka

Nobuyoshi Araki & Shirô Tsujimura – Work in Progress, 2011, © Foto: Malinka

Goldene Impressionen: Japanische Malerei 1400–1900, 2011, © Foto: Malinka

Exhibitions

Current shows and preview

Exhibition | Current

EXPEDITIONS

October 25, 2024 to March 30, 2025

Frieda and Adolf Fischer founded the Museum of East Asian Art in Cologne in 1909. Their first study tour together, from October 1897 to May 1899, brought the couple from Berlin to Japan. After staying in Kobe, Kyoto and Tokyo, in spring 1898 Adolf Fischer visited the island of Taiwan, known historically as “Formosa”, which had been ruled by Imperial Japan since 1895. The exhibition is centred on previously unpublished travel diaries, reports and photographs produced by Frieda and Adolf Fischer. Artworks purchased in Japan and ethnographic objects acquired in Taiwan provide evidence of the couple’s early collecting activities. more

Exhibition | Current

Bizarre Beauties

April 9, 2024 to January 6, 2025

Since the Tang Dynasty (601–907), Chinese literati have been collecting bizarrely shaped rocks. Placed in the garden as miniature versions of mountain peaks, they represent a microcosm of nature in which the scholar meditates, drawing inspiration from them and devoting himself to the arts of poetry, painting and calligraphy, or playing the zither. more

Exhibition | Current

Tanaka Ryohei

November 30, 2024 to April 13, 2025

Tanaka Ryohei (1933–2019) was a Japanese printmaker who masterfully employed the Western intaglio technique of etching (Japanese: doban). His predominantly monochromatic prints depict Japan’s traditional thatched-roof farmhouses, temples, and landscapes with poetic beauty and a gentle melancholy. The textures of thatch, wood, stone, and other natural materials are rendered with remarkable precision and perfection. more

Exhibition | Preview

Ink Roamings

April 5, 2025 to November 9, 2025

“Ink Roamings” presents works by the contemporary Chinese artist Jianfeng Pan (*1973) of the past decade, ranging from small album to monumental scroll formats. His multiversal work is both deeply rooted in China’s historical arts of writing and painting and shaped by his eclectic visions as a graphic designer. With his self-description as a “Social Calligrapher,” Pan, today living in Finland, shapes his creative practice of Radical Ink, respectively, Mindful Ink: calligraphy as a contemporary medium and endeavor promoting human communication and spiritual growth across society and cultures. more

Deutsch

Opening times

Tuesday to Sunday
11am – 5pm
Every first Thursday in the month
11am – 10pm (except October 3, 2024)

The museum is closed due to the Cologne Marathon on 6 October 2024.

Closed Mondays; open on All Saints' Day
Museum is closed on December 24th, Christmas Day (25 Dec), New Year's Eve (31 Dec) and New Year's Day (1 Jan). Museum is opend on Easter Monday, Whit Monday, German Unity Day and December 26.