It’s pumpkin time

Published Sep 12, 2014

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Tokyo - From the moment visitors get off the ferry on Naoshima Island, they will encounter works of art.

Some works are part of the original collection, donated by the Bennesse corporation, while others have been inspired to join in since the company turned the area into a thriving artistic community.

While there are pieces of art scattered all over the island, the centre of the project is considered to be the Tadao Ando designed museum and hotel that make up the Bennesse complex.

Naoshima’s history is inspiring. In the 1980s the chairman of Fukutake Publishing began looking for a home for their corporate art collection. Rather than build a museum in Tokyo, the chairman wondered if the islands he remembered from his youth might benefit from the influx of an artistic economy.

Mineral resources, once the lifeblood of the islands, were no longer profitable and the youth were leaving behind careers such as fishing and moving to bigger cities, all culminating in a depressed economy.

Luckily a mayor from the island region reached out to the chairman and a plan evolved.

To start the artistic revolution in the area, Ando was contracted to design the beginnings of a complex of museums that were dramatic on the inside, but surprisingly subtle on the outside.

This high-profile project led to new commissions of site-specific works, especially in Naoshima. The corporation, now known as Bennesse, created a foundation that puts an increasing amount of modern art on display in the town.

 

Special attention should be paid to the fishermen’s houses in the port area, the sculptures on the grounds of the Bennesse Museum/Hotel and the Chichu Art Museum, which houses a number of site-specific installations by James Turrell, Walter De Maria and paintings by Claude Monet. Also designed by Ando, it is located on one of the highest points of the island – Slate.com

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