Exploring Naoshima, Japan’s island of art
By Glenn Kessler
The easiest way to make our three children groan has always been suggesting a visit to an art museum.
So it was with some trepidation that on a recent family vacation to Japan, my wife and I decided to schedule a two-day visit to an island that’s almost entirely devoted to contemporary art. The stopover would be a splurge, since the cost of rooms and meals on this arty isle is over-the-top even by Japan’s inflated standards. But we hoped the total-immersion tactic might finally put an end to the griping about touring art museums.
Naoshima, in Japan’s Seto Inland Sea, is barely 10 square miles in area, but it has become one of the world’s leading centers of modern art. In 1992 the Benesse Corp., a Japanese publishing and educational company that owns Berlitz, established the first museum, Benesse House, to display artworks it had acquired. Now, internationally renowned artists compete to display their work all over the island. There is also a second museum, featuring Claude Monet’s water lily paintings; a series of striking art installations amid the houses of one village; outdoor art scattered along the coast; and a third museum under construction.
Not only that, but the main museum is also the hotel. After the day-trippers have left the island, a handful of guests have free rein at Benesse House, able to wander the halls at their leisure examining pieces by Jackson Pollock, Jasper Johns, Frank Stella and other greats in a strikingly modern space designed by Tadao Ando, one of Japan’s most famous architects. The museum is completely integrated with the sea and the sky, so a vivid Jean-Michel Basquiat canvas looms over you as you eat breakfast in the morning while gazing at the horizon.