Yoshiko Mori, chairperson emerita of Tokyo’s Mori Art Museum, died on December 23 from pneumonia. She was 85 years old. The museum confirmed her death in a statement on Tuesday. She and her husband, real estate developer Minoru Mori, who died in 2012, opened the museum, considered one of Japan’s top contemporary art institutions, in 2003.
“For more than two decades since then,” the museum said in a statement, “she devoted herself with great passion to contemporary art, and as the museum’s founding chairperson, it was her joy to contribute to both the international development of the museum and contemporary art in Japan. At this time, we would like to express our deepest gratitude for the kindness and support shown to us during her lifetime.”
Born in 1940, Yoshiko Mori graduated from the arts and sciences program at Tokyo Women’s Christian University in 1964. She became director at the Mori Building Company in 2000, and from 2001 to 2015 was director of the Mori Building Hospitality Corporation. She served as chairperson at the museum from 2003 to 2024, when she became chairperson emerita. She founded the Mori Contemporary Art Foundation in 2025.
Forbes currently lists her net worth as $3 billion, placing her among Japan’s 50 richest people.
Sited in the top five floors of the Mori Tower, a skyscraper in Tokyo’s swanky Roppongi Hills development, the museum focuses on contemporary art by artists ranging from emerging to established. Its collection, of contemporary art primarily from Japan and the Asia-Pacific region, remains small, at fewer than 500 works, according to the museum. It includes globally renowned artists such as Ai Weiwei, Cao Fei, Laurent Grasso, Shilpa Gupta, Yayoi Kusama, Lee Ufan, Tala Madani, Mariko Mori, Yoshitomo Nara, Yoko Ono, Do Ho Suh, and Apitchatpong Weerasethakul.
Recent exhibitions have included “Machine Love: Video Game, AI and Contemporary Art”; “Tokyo Underground 1960-1970s – A Turning Point in Postwar Japanese Culture”; “Louise Bourgeois: I have been to hell and back. And let me tell you, it was wonderful”; “Theaster Gates: Afro-Mingei”; and “The Dawn of Taiwanese Video Art in the 1980s-1990s.”
Mori supported the international art world in various roles. She was a trustee at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, from 1999 to 2017. She was a councilor for the Tokyo Council for the Arts from 2007 to 2012, and served in the same rold at the Odawara Art Foundation in 2009 and the Western Art Foundation in 2014. In 2012, she was a member of the International Council at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and of the Tate International Council, in London. In 2017 she was an honorary trustee at the Royal Academy of Arts, London.
Mori was honored as a chevalier of the Legion of Honor in France in 2013 and was appointed an honorary officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2025.
