Lomography

Naoshima Island
written by takezzo on January 16th, 2009 , 4 comments (1 vote)

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Naoshima is located in the middle of Setonai-kai inland sea near Takamatsu. It must have been a quiet fishermen’s island until Benesse Corporation (originally an educational publisher) came and built their museum/hotel facility. Then they invited worldly famous artists/architects to participate their projects on the island.

There are some affordable places to stay on the island if you are on tight budget. But if you can afford, I recommend you to try one of Benesse House’s guest rooms. The building was designed by the Japanese architect, Tadao Ando. Its gallery space accommodates artworks by contemporary artists including my favorite Jasper Jones and David Hockney. There are many outdoor artworks (such as a famous Yellow Pumpkin by Yayoi Kusama) exhibited around the museum as well.

Chichu Museum (or Underground Museum) was also designed by Tadao Ando, and it accommodates artworks by only three artists: Claude Monet, Walter De Maria and James Turrell. I think such an unique combination of classical and modern artists makes this museum very unique. They limit the number of audience allowed inside each room, so you might want to visit the museum in the morning and spend afternoon for outdoor artworks.

A 5 minute bus ride from Benesse House will bring you to Honmaru district, where you can see the Art House Project. Artists including James Turrell, Shinro Ohtake, and Hiroshi Senju were invited to remodel the old town houses in the district into artworks. If the weather is good enough, it would be a pleasant few hour walk to look around all the houses.

We stayed there for two nights, which covered pretty much everything we wanted to see. Maybe with extra half day, we could have had a famous Udon noodle.