The Best Place to See Monet's
Water Lilies is on an island in Japan
Where Art and Nature Coexist

There are many reasons why Monet’s Water Lilies might be some of the most immersive works of art you can experience in person. His use of colors in transposing sunlight onto canvas. Vibrant hues and brushwork that showcase the playful, transient nature of light. His ability to capture a fleeting moment in time and evoke a sense of tranquility and contentment. “The water flowers are just the accompaniment,” he said. The real focus was light on water, a whimsical and capricious subject he obsessed over for nearly a quarter of a century.

“The passing cloud, the fresh breeze, a rainstorm, the sudden fierce gust of wind, the fading or suddenly refulgent light … creates changes in color and alters the surface of the water,” said the artist in an interview. From the late 1890s to 1926, he would create more than 250 paintings of the water lilies.

The series remains some of the most iconic impressionist art today. Each year, the Musée de l’Orangerie, most famous as the Parisian home of eight large Water Lilies murals, attracts close to 1.2 million visitors. Historian Louis Gillet describes the oval rooms showcasing these paintings across curved walls as an experience of “liquid movement.” The exhibit is designed to envelope the audience, and would undoubtedly be the most captivating display of the Water Lilies, if not for the overwhelming crowds—think unruly visitors jostling for photographs—that detract from the experience.

Inside The Chichu Art Museum on Naoshima, an island turned playground for patrons and art enthusiasts, visitors enter a dreamy, meditative space to enjoy Monet’s Water Lilies under soft, natural light. All five paintings are part of the collection originally produced for the Musée de l’Orangerie. On Naoshima, the appearance of these artworks change based on the time of day as well as season due to shifts in lighting. This interplay of light and shadow allows viewers to experience not only the art itself but engage in meaningful dialogue. A tribute to Claude Monet’s vision and deep appreciation for nature, the installment brings his paintings to life the way he tried to capture the passage of time—through endless iterations of a single subject.

The Chichu Art Museum is just one of seven galleries or art spaces at Benesse Art Site Naoshima. Designed by Tadao Ando, one of Japan’s most influential contemporary architects, the Museum houses immersive pieces by Claude Monet, Walter De Maria, and James Turrell. Tadao Ando is known for his minimalist concrete structures and integration of landscape and architecture. Here, all exhibition spaces, not just the Monet room, were designed and built around each works of art. By limiting the number of visitors entering at any one time, and requiring removal of footwear for certain exhibits, the museum can be enjoyed with limited intrusion of sound.

Outside, a little garden vaguely reminiscent of the one in Monet’s Giverny home offers a tangible experience of the nature depicted in his paintings. With nearly 200 kinds of flowers and trees, this charming outdoor space allows visitors to enjoy signs of the seasons including willows, poppies, irises, and the water lilies that captured the artist’s attention in his later years.

Anyone who has ever come across a new hiking trail or lost track of time wandering around an exhibit will know the bizarre feeling of waking up in a dreamscape, almost as if you were crossing into a different plane of existence. In a similar way, art can create a sense of time travel or disrupt our linear understanding of time, effectively unsettling our sense of temporal reality.

One surreal weekend in Naoshima has that very same effect. On this island where art, nature, design, and architecture seamlessly converge, museumgoers travel between mixed-used galleries across 14 square kilometers. Among twenty contemporary outdoor installations dotted around the island, two of Yayoi Kusama’s pumpkins—distinct motifs of the Pop Art movement—and sculptures by the likes of Walter De Maria and Anthony Caro take up residence along a unique art trail. Many of these installations are separated by small hills and only accessible by foot, making (electric) bicycle the best way to get around Naoshima.

A symbol of Benesse Art Site, the yellow polka-dotted pumpkin sits on a quiet pier with a contrasting blue backdrop of the Seto Inland Sea. It was created in 1994, the largest of its kind, and the first of Yayoi Kusama’s pumpkins to be designed for an outdoor exhibit in which the natural landscape becomes a part of the art. Yayoi Kusama is Japan’s most famous artist in the 21st century. Known for her bold, repetitive patterns coupled with usage of mirrors and light that create intense yet playful illusions, Kusama began painting polka dots on walls and furniture from the age of 10 to cope with the vivid hallucinations she experienced through her lifelong struggle with neuroses. She described these childhood hallucinations as, “flashes of light, auras, or dense fields of dots which would come to life, multiply and engulf (herself) and (her) surroundings.” Later in life, her spirituality and newfound peace through meditation transformed Kusama’s polka dots into visual representations of the infinite universe, points with no conceivable ending.

A short walk along the coast brings you to the next piece, a peculiar sculpture that draws art photographers and fans of minimalism. A pioneer of minimal, conceptual, land art, Walter De Maria is best known for his earthwork, The Lightning Field. Made of 400 stainless steel poles designed to attract lightning strikes, this installation sits in a remote desert of New Mexico. Each pole is precisely placed so that only a single one is visible when viewed straight on, evoking a sense of isolation and suspension. Although not inherently dangerous to visitors, lightning strikes do occur at the site and visitors are required to sign a release form before entering. Less exciting but still worth visiting is Seen/Unseen Known/Unknown on Naoshima, two granite spheres that reflect an ever-changing view. As you move, you see different portions of the sea and part of the installation is blocked, unknown, unseen. The surface material plays with changes in lighting and visitors often find themselves returning to the artwork at different hours of the day.

Overnight guests of Benesse House enjoy not only free admission to certain galleries but exclusive viewings after hours and re-entry to The Chichu Art Museum among other popular art spaces on the island. One reason to return to Chichu in the afternoon is Open Field, an interactive exhibit by James Turrell. Unlike other contemporary artists, Turrell presents light itself as art. His work can be quite flat—aesthetic, but admittedly shallow—when viewed on a screen, but in person, it is one of the most memorable concepts on Naoshima. At Open Field, visitors are invited up a short flight of stairs to spend a couple of minutes in a technicolor room. Inside, your perception of light and spatial awareness is challenged, as you see from within the artwork how light is manipulated around you. It feels like stepping into a modern day, experiential Rothko or with some imagination (recreational drugs), an alien abduction.

Wander at your leisure through Hiroshi Fujimoto’s Gallery and Benesse House Museum, popular venues open to the public until 3 and 9 PM respectively. Only guests of the hotel are allowed access until 11 PM, as well as free admission to these and a few other galleries on the island including Valley Gallery, a permanent home of Yayoi Kusama’s famed Narcissus Garden. Each museum at Benesse Art Site was designed with the location in mind, allowing natural sunlight to interact with the exhibits. The art changes its expressions with the seasons and time of day which hotel guests can enjoy at exclusive hours.