The Japanese Royal House and the Japan Art Association have given the Praemium Imperiale to the painter William Kentridge, the sculptor Mona Hatoum, the violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, the actor Bando Tamasaburo, and the US husband-and-wife architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, who have been working together from New York since 1986, always in commitment to the avant-garde and the experimental, as shown in highly exceptional works like the American Folk Art Museum, which unfortunately was demolished a few years ago – to much controversy and outrage – in order to make room for the Museum of Modern Art’s latest expansion, commissioned to Diller Scofidio + Renfro.