NAOSHIMA.- Launched in the late 1980s, Benesse Art Site Naoshima aspires to build a community through partnerships with locals and a harmony of nature, architecture, and art. It has created a nexus of museums and art facilities, turning Naoshima, Teshima, and Inujima into a place unlike any other in the world. The latest addition to this thirty-five-year endeavor is the Naoshima New Museum of Art. Located in a village, it marks architect Tadao Ando’s tenth contribution to the Benesse Art Site Naoshima constellation of museums and facilities, and is the first to bear the name of the island.

Naoshima New Museum of Art exhibits and collects works by artists from Japan and other parts of Asia. Through occasional and partial rotations of exhibits and various public programs, it aims to convey more diverse perspectives and forms of expression as well as multifaceted messages about the times and society, and be a place of exchange and collaboration for people to visit time and again, and a wide range of locals and visitors to meet.

The inaugural exhibition, From the Origin to the Future, focuses on works carefully selected to embody the message Honorary Chairman Soichiro Fukutake, who has led Benesse Art Site Naoshima, wishes to convey for the future. It features representative works and freshly commissioned works by twelve artists and groups some of whom have been involved with Benesse Art Site Naoshima from its early years, as well as others who have developed a relationship since 2016 when the Benesse Prize moved from Venice to Asia, and also those encountered on research trips in recent years.

Major works by artists on display include a set of ten large paintings that are the culmination of the decades-long career of leading Indonesian artist Heri Dono. First shown at Takashi Murakami’s solo exhibition in Kyoto, the monumental Rakuchū-Rakugai-zu Byōbu: Iwasa Matabei RIP now includes new characters and is further elaborated with gold leaf. Also on show in a large space is one of Cai Guo-Qiang’s significant pieces, Head On, which has caused a great stir with its appearances at the Guggenheim and other major museums around the world since it was first unveiled in Berlin in 2006.

The exhibition resonates with the daily life and rhythms of the island through such works as Do Ho Suh’s major Hub series, replicating the places he has inhabited and now including a new corridor from a house in Naoshima, as well as N.S. Harsha’s synthesis of perspectives painted to match the museum’s multipurpose café that serves as a space for locals and visitors to interact.

Other exhibiting artists include Makoto Aida, Martha Atienza, Chim↑Pom from Smappa!Group, Heri Dono and indieguerillas, Sanitas Pradittasnee, Motoyuki Shitamichi + Jeffrey Lim, and Pannaphan Yodmanee.

The architecture

With one above-ground and two basement floors, Naoshima New Museum of Art features a large roof that gracefully harmonizes with the ridge of the hills. Bathed in natural light from a skylight, the staircase forms a single line connecting the ground level to the basements, with four galleries on either side. A café adjoins the north side of the ground floor, offering a terrace overlooking the Seto Inland Sea and from which visitors can enjoy scenic views so quintessential to the region, including the island of Teshima and passing fishing boats.

As the first built in the village of Naoshima, the museum’s exterior is designed to blend in with the local landscape, with such distinctive features as black plaster outside walls to match the traditional burned-cedar method still used on the island as well as pebble walls inspired by the houses of the Honmura area. In this way, the architecture and approach to the museum subtly intersects with the history of Naoshima and the activities and experiences of its people.