Benesse House Museum

photo by 663highland · CC BY 2.5

photo by Bea Phi · CC BY-SA 4.0

Open since 1992, it is also a hotel: each of the 65 rooms has a different work.

Built on a headland dropping sheer to the Inland Sea, the museum-hotel designed by Ando Tadao lets the island's landscape in through large openings in the exposed concrete. The works are not only in the galleries: they line the cliff and the surrounding woods, including Kusama Yayoi's Yellow Pumpkin on the pier nearby. Guests sleeping in the 65 rooms find a different work in each, and can book Cai Guo-Qiang's ritual bath: water with five Chinese herbs, following the feng shui of the site.

Opened in 1992 to a design by Ando Tadao, it was the first piece of Benesse Art Site Naoshima, the project born in 1985 from the meeting between the publisher Fukutake Tetsuhiko and the island's mayor to bring together contemporary art, architecture and nature in a place that the copper-refining industry had left depopulated. It later gave rise to the Chichu Art Museum (2004) and the Lee Ufan Museum (2010).

ℹ️ Open 8:00–21:00 all year, last entry at 20:00. Tickets 1,300 yen online, 1,500 at the ticket desk; free for under-15s and for those staying at Benesse House. Cai Guo-Qiang's ritual bath is reserved for hotel guests, by booking.

🚉 Tsutsuji-so · 11 min walk

Sources: benesse-artsite.jp

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