The National Art Center, Tokyo

This museum has one of Japan's largest exhibition spaces, yet it doesn't even have a permanent collection of its own. Rather, it serves as the canvas for Japanese artists' associations, shows organized by its own curators, and joint exhibitions in cooperation with other art institutions and even mass-media corporations. As such, its shows are both eclectic and impressive, with past exhibitions including a retrospective of Japanese government-sponsored art exhibitions from the last century; a powerful display of masks, religious idols, and other objects from around the world from Japan's National Museum of Ethnology; and Impressionist works from Paris’s Musée d’Orsay. In other words, you never know what you might see; there are also smaller galleries showing the works of regional and national artists. Many people drop by just to dine in the museum's Brasserie Paul Bocuse Le Musée or browse the expansive museum shop (you can enter both without paying admission). Of the three museums in the Art Triangle Roppongi, which includes the nearby Mori Art Museum and Suntory Museum of Art, this is by far the sexiest, with a seductive undulating facade that would entice me to visit even without knowing what's inside.