Photo/Illutration The Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art in Sakura, Chiba Prefecture. A sculpture by U.S. painter and sculptor Frank Stella stands near the entrance. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

A struggling museum in Chiba Prefecture will sell off three-fourths of its collection and transfer prized modern American artworks to a new facility in Tokyo.

The Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art will relocate to a building that the International House of Japan will open on its grounds in Tokyo’s Roppongi district in 2030, DIC Corp., the operator, announced March 12.

The new building will accommodate roughly a fourth of the 384 items currently in the museum’s collection.

A series of seven abstract paintings by noted U.S. artist Mark Rothko (1903-1970), the museum’s crown jewels, will be housed in the new building’s Rothko Room once built.

SANAA, a famed architectural design office led by architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, will design the exhibition room.

DIC, a chemicals manufacturer, will jointly oversee the project with the International House of Japan, a public interest corporation formed in 1952 with assistance from the Rockefeller Foundation and other entities.

Other specific pieces to be displayed at the new location will be chosen in the future, but will mainly comprise postwar American art.

The current museum facility in Sakura, Chiba Prefecture, will permanently shut its doors at the end of March.

Oasis Management Co., a Hong Kong investment fund that owns about 12 percent of DIC’s shares, criticized the company’s decision to retain one-fourth of the collection.

It said DIC has failed to present evidence that backs the decision in terms of corporate value.

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