when i first visited naoshimain a mild january in 2003, although you would immediately recognise the house benesseresort / cum hotel / cum art gallery, that would be pretty much all there would be to see. what is now the park resort didn’t exist, and was occupied by a pau(or yurt) glamping site. the museum’s main collection, although it hasn’t grown hugely in the intervening years is nevertheless, significantly larger. the collection has also grown with the developments on nearby teshimaisland, a huge expansion to the hotel accommodation, with the very welcome addition of a cocktail bar lined with the photography of hiroshi sugimotoand a somewhat inevitable soundtrack of lounge jazz, bossa nova, and discreet trance / electro. all very pleasant.
in addition to the hotel expansion there are two new museum-galleries, housing works by lee ufana leading korean-japanese master of what has come to be known as mono-ha(a school of korean-japanese-chinese modernist work, akin to both conceptualism and minimalism, and the chichumuseum; an underground, tadao andodesigned structure housing a small number of artworks.
these supplement the ‘art house’ installations of the small town known as honmuraaround the island form house benesse.
these images are just a small selection of the images i propose to post in the next week or so.