Lee Ufan Museum

photo by 松岡明芳 · CC BY-SA 3.0

photo by 松岡明芳 · CC BY-SA 3.0

The world's first museum devoted to a single Korean-Japanese artist, half underground.

In a narrow valley between sea and mountains, Ando Tadao's semi-underground building sets his architecture in dialogue with the works of Lee Ufan: canvases painted to the rhythm of a repeated breath, and sculptures that pair a natural stone with an iron plate, adding nothing else. In the ‘Pillar Square’ at the entrance, the work ‘Relatum – Infinite Gate’ (2019) is the most recent addition to the 2010 route.

Opened on 15 June 2010 to a design by Ando Tadao, it is the world's first museum devoted exclusively to Lee Ufan (1936, Korea), a central figure of the ‘Mono-ha’ movement from the late '60s: it came out of the meeting between the artist and Benesse Art Site Naoshima after the ‘Resonance’ exhibition at the 2007 Venice Biennale.

ℹ️ Open 10:00–17:00 (last entry 16:30), closed on Mondays (if a public holiday, closed the following day). Ticket 1,200 yen online, 1,400 at the ticket office; free under 15. Private guided tour on request (2,160 yen per group of up to 8 people, plus the ticket); free guided tour every Saturday and Sunday at 14:30, no booking needed.

🚉 Yakuba-mae (Town Hall) · 21 min walk

Sources: benesse-artsite.jp

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