I LOVE MUSEUMS

The billionaire behind Japan's art islands has one final jewel in his crown

- TED LOOS

On a tree-dotted hill on Naoshima, an island in Japan's Seto Inland Sea, a museum was being completed, with construction equipment on hand and workers finishing their day.

The Naoshima New Museum of Art opened on Saturday. A concrete structure by Tadao Ando, it has a few unusual touches for a building by this Pritzker Prizewinning architect. There's a pebbly wall along the walkway to the entrance. To harmonise with the townscape, it has a black plaster exterior, exhibition spaces that are largely underground, and a single storey above, topped by a sloped metal roof. The iridescent sea is visible from the top floor.

The museum is the latest star in the constellation of more than three dozen museums and projects called Benesse Art Site Naoshima, spread across three islands. The New Museum is the first to focus exclusively on contemporary Asian art.

And it is likely to provide more fuel for global art pilgrims — some 6 million of them since 2004 — who have flocked to the islands, most taking a couple of trains and a ferry to experience major artworks in unusual settings.

Some of the Benesse installations are set into the landscape, while others are placed in what look like normal houses in a village, hidden in plain sight.

Tucked into the woods on Naoshima (which only has around 3,000 residents) is Ando's Chichu Art Museum, which holds five of Claude Monet's Water Lilies paintings as well as works by Walter De Maria and James Turrell.

The Benesse programme officially began in 1992 with the Benesse House Museum on Naoshima, an Ando-designed hotel-museum filled with name-brand art by the likes of Alberto Giacometti, Robert Rauschenberg and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Yayoi Kusama's much-photographed sculpture of a yellow pumpkin with black polka dots sits on a nearby pier.