The museum was designed by Japanese architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of the architectural office SANAA in 2004.

[1] In 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic it attracted only 971,256 visitors, a drop of 63 percent from 2019, but it still ranked tenth on the list of most-visited art museums in the world.

This shape aims to keep the appearance of the overall building volume low, to mitigate the scale of the project and allows access from multiple points of entry.

[4] Artists in the permanent collection include; Francis Alys, Matthew Barney, Tony Cragg, Olafur Eliasson, Leandro Erlich, Isa Genzken, Kojima Hisaya, Gordon Matta Clark, Peter Newman, Carsten Nicolai, Giuseppe Penone, Gerhard Richter, Murayama Ruriko, Hiraki Sawa, Atsuko Tanaka, James Turrell, Patrick Tuttofuoco, Anne Wilson and Suda Yoshihiro.

Among the large scale works on permanent display are Leandro Ehrlich's Swimming Pool and Color Activity House by Olaflur Eliasson.