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Setonaikai NP, Kagawa
Claim this place to tell your story your way.
Kusama’s yellow Pumpkin debuted in Naoshima’s 1994 “Out of Bounds” outdoor show, helping art step into the seascape. Made for this setting, it is about 2 m high and 2.5 m wide—among her largest pumpkins then.
Shinro Ohtake’s beachside Shipyard Works looked so much like wreckage that Naoshima fishermen reportedly contacted staff about a shipwreck. The “wreck” was art made using discarded ship materials.
On the shore below the museum, Cai Guo-Qiang’s Cultural Melting Bath pairs Chinese Taihu stones arranged with feng shui and a real whirlpool bath. The water uses 5 medicinal herbs; bathing is for hotel guests.
Walter De Maria’s Seaside Gallery work has 2 polished granite spheres and 2 pairs of gold-colored wood forms. No single viewpoint shows them all, and the scenery reflected in the spheres shifts as you move.
Yoshihiro Suda’s 2026 Rose—Former Payphone Site marks a spot where a public phone was removed as mobile phones spread. Like his lifelike weeds and flowers, the rose is painstakingly carved from wood.
Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Time Exposed is not confined to a gallery: 14 seascape photographs line 2 outdoor terrace walls facing the Inland Sea, with 7 on each side.
Richard Long’s Naoshima works join 2 very different shores: he gathered island driftwood for one circle, while the mud circles on a gallery wall use mud from the River Avon near his hometown, Bristol.
During a 1997 visit, Richard Long made 4 works in just a few days. For one, he marked a 6.8 m-diameter circle on the sea-view terrace with kite string and chalk, then arranged stones gathered for the work.
Some permanent works leave the galleries entirely: they are placed throughout the building, along the seashore, and in nearby woodland. Artists choose locations and create works specifically for those places.
To keep the Seto Inland Sea scenery in the foreground, Tadao Ando fitted about half the museum into the slope. Large openings then bring the ocean and island views back into the building.
When it opened in July 1992, the building combined a contemporary-art museum and a hotel. Its art activity began under the name Naoshima Contemporary Art Museum, and Tadao Ando designed the building.
The project grew from a 1985 meeting: publishing founder Tetsuhiko Fukutake wanted a Seto Inland Sea gathering place for children worldwide, while Naoshima mayor Chikatsugu Miyake envisioned a cultural-education district.
Typhoon No. 9 damaged the Pumpkin in August 2021. After restoration work, a reconstructed version returned to its original pier on October 4, 2022—back in the same seafront setting.
