WSJ Magazine – Benesse Art Site, Japan

In the Fall this year I had the opportunity to travel to Japan’s Seto Inland Sea to photograph a series of amazing museums and art installations that are part of the ‘Benesse Art Site’.  Darryl Wee (the writer of the piece) describes it as follows:

“The Benesse Art Site, an archipelago of art-sprinkled Japanese islands, is billionaire businessman Soichiro Fukutake’s realized vision of an ecologically enlightened “slow life.” The head of an educational publishing company, Benesse Corporation, Fukutake started this remote haven for contemplating art framed by nature some 20 years ago. Accessible only by ferry, after a three-hour bullet-train ride from Tokyo, the cluster of islands just off the coast of Okayama is located far enough from the hyperactive density of Japanese cities to tune out the urban hum, allowing visitors to truly transport themselves as they walk, muse and view the growing collection of contemporary art and installations on a wide-open-spaces scale.”

You can check out the slideshow of images here:
http://magazine.wsj.com/places-things/the-fine-art-of-escape/tab/slideshow/

For me the highlight were all of the Tadao Ando-designed museums, including the Chichu Art Museum (地中美術館), which unfortunately I was not permitted to photograph. Next time!

One of his museums is the Benesse House Museum, here housing a work by Bruce Nauman: “100 Live and Die”.

Bruce Nauman's work, "100 Live and Die"