The passing of Yoshiko Mori on December 23, 2025 in Tokyo of pneumonia has been noted with great sadness. She was the charming and intelligent founding chairperson of the Mori Art Museum, which she cofounded with her late husband, Minoru Mori, in 2003. As a member of the board of directors of the Mori Building Company, she had positioned arts and culture at the heart of one of Japan’s largest and most transformational real estate developers.

I first met Yoshiko in 2001 after I, an anglophone outsider, had arrived in Tokyo as the founding director of the still-unformed Mori Art Museum. I was rapidly impressed by her friendly warmth and support, as well as by her insistence on culture of many kinds being a vitally important and continuing feature of the public identity of the still-growing Mori Building Company. 

Under her chairmanship of its board, the Mori Art Museum strongly developed, exhibiting and supporting a wide range of contemporary artists from Japan, other parts of Asia, and much further afield, so that it became established by showing the strength, diversity, and relevance of contemporary art to the museum’s millions of visitors. She also took great interest in, and helped expand, the museum’s collection of contemporary Asian art. In May 2025, she became the founding chairperson of the Mori Contemporary Art Foundation, a post she assumed on becoming the first chairperson emerita of the museum’s board. 

She has also contributed her talents as a board member of many international nonprofit arts organizations, including the Royal Academy of Arts in London, the Obayashi Foundation in Tokyo, the Museum of Modern Art International Council, New York, and the Tate International Council in London. In tribute to her wide influence, she received the honor of Chevalier of the Legion of Honour in France in 2013, and became an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2025.

Her quiet, constructive energy will be sorely missed.

David Elliott was the inaugural director of the Mori Art Museum (2001–06).