M+ Premieres M+ Matters Keynote Series with Miracle of the Benesse Art Site Naoshima

8 December 2017
Wang Gungwu Theatre, Graduate House, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
 

M+ at West Kowloon Cultural District, is pleased to launch M+ Matters Keynote, a new segment in the ongoing M+ Matters series of public talks and symposia. Miracle of the Benesse Art Site Naoshima, a partner programme of the Business of Design Week 2017 (BODW), takes place today.
 

Through the invitation and participation of key figures from the global art and cultural scene, M+ Matters Keynote focuses on the exploration of the most influential cultural projects of today which have helped shape and inform the current arts ecosystem.
 

This first keynote talk highlights the Benesse Art Site Naoshima, a pioneering cultural project spread across three small islands, Naoshima, Teshima and Inujima, in western Japan. Initiated in the late 1980s by Soichiro Fukutake, now President of the site, Chairman of the Board of the Fukutake Foundation, and General Producer of the Setouchi Triennale, the project sought to transform and revitalise the isolated and depopulating lands through a series of cultural venues, museums, exhibitions, and other initiatives. Through the 30-year history of the Benesse Art Site, the project has emphasised on the relationship between art, nature, architecture, and local communities, including a number of site-specific works created by acclaimed artists and architects to explore these connections throughout the years.
 

Putting a spotlight on the success story of the Benesse Art Site Naoshima, this inaugural M+ Matters Keynote talk will bring together key figures involved in the project, including Soichiro Fukutake, two of his collaborators and celebrated achitects, Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA, as well as Akiko Miki, International Artistic Director of the project, to examine the site’s story, visitor experience, the transformative effect of the project, and building a landmark cultural destination in the region for a blueprint of sustainability through art and culture.
 

“We are proud to present the evolution of our M+ Matters series of talks with this first Keynote event on the Benesesse Art Site Naoshima,” says Suhanya Raffel, Executive Director of M+. “With the presence of these four distinguished speakers, our audience will experience first-hand exclusive insight into this project, adding to the ongoing discourse and deliberation these talks encourage. Through our programming, we look to continue utilising such insight from industry leaders to strengthen our outreach as essential educational and informative aspects of a cultural institution for the region and beyond.”
 

Keynote is part of a bigger series M+ Matters, which brings together leading practitioners, curators and thinkers to share their views on a wide range of topics relevant to the creation of M+ with the general public.
 

For more information: https://www.westkowloon.hk/keynote
 

Remarks

About M+ Matters 
Since 2012, M+ Matters seeks to bring leading practitioners, curators and thinkers from around the world to share their views on topics relevant to the building of a new museum of visual culture in Hong Kong, with members of the public. Previous M+ Matters have examined a range of topics, including Asian design; contemporary ink art; China’s museum building boom; blurred boundaries between artwork and documentation; postwar abstraction in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan; postwar design and industry in East Asia; theorising art histories globally; global museums’ collection and display strategies; 1980s art landscape in China and East Asia; activist art and design from a museological perspective; copy culture; art of the Pearl River Delta; and connections to South and Southeast Asia.
 

About M+
Hong Kong’s museum for visual culture—encompassing 20th and 21st century art, design and architecture, and moving image from Hong Kong, China, Asia, and beyond—M+ will be one of the largest museums of modern and contemporary visual culture in the world.  Located adjacent to the Art Park on the waterfront, the museum building, designed by Herzog & de Meuron, is scheduled to open in 2019.
 

About West Kowloon Cultural District
Located on Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour, West Kowloon Cultural District is one of the largest cultural projects in the world. The vision of the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority is to create a vibrant new cultural quarter for Hong Kong. With a complex of theatres, performance spaces and M+, West Kowloon Cultural District will produce and host world-class exhibitions, performances and cultural events, as well as provide 23 hectares of public open space, including a two-kilometre waterfront promenade.
 

Annex

General Information
 

M+ Matters Keynote: Miracle of the Benesse Art Site Naoshima
Friday, 8 December 2017
5:30 PM – 7:00 PM
Wang Gungwu Theatre, Graduate House, The University of Hong Kong 
 

Speakers:
Soichiro Fukutake, President, Benesse Art Site Naoshima; Chairman of the Board, Fukutake Foundation; and General Producer, Setouchi Triennale
Kazuyo Sejima, Principal Architect, SANAA
Ryue Nishizawa, Principal Architect, SANAA
Akiko Miki, International Artistic Director, Benesse Art Site Naoshima 
 

Language:
The talk will be conducted in Japanese, with English and Cantonese simultaneous interpretation.
 

Free admission. Limited capacity on a first-come, first-served basis.
 

Speakers:
Soichiro Fukutake
An Okayama native, Soichiro Fukutake graduated from the Faculty of Science and Engineering at Waseda University, Tokyo. In 1973 he joined Fukutake Publishing (now Benesse Holdings, Inc.), where he was appointed Representative Director in 1986, and Chairman and CEO in 2007. He was made Executive Adviser of Benesse Holdings Inc. in 2014, and since October 2016 has served as the company’s Honorary Adviser. For over 25 years, Fukutake has spearheaded the Seto Inland Sea renaissance around Naoshima, Teshima and Inujima through the Benesse Art Site Naoshima, a project focused on art, nature and architecture. In 2004, he established the Naoshima Fukutake Art Museum Foundation (now Fukutake Foundation), opened the Chichu Art Museum on Naoshima, and was named an honorary citizen of Naoshima. He has received numerous distinguished awards, including the Minister of Education Award for Fine Arts (2008), the AU Appreciation Prize (2010), the JIA Grand Prix (2011), and the Montblanc de la Culture Arts Patronage Award (2012).
 

Kazuyo Sejima
Prolific Japanese architect Kazuyo Sejima has produced memorable buildings and museums in Japan, Europe, and America. Sejima studied architecture and graduated with a master’s degree from Japan Women’s University in 1981. After graduating, she apprenticed with Toyo Ito for six years before starting her own practice in 1987. Sejima is known for clean, sleek, curved modernist designs incorporating glass, metal, and the colour white. Her early projects, such as the Platform Houses (1987–1990) and the Villa in the Forest in Nagano (1992–1994), demonstrate Sejima’s concern with the temporal physicality of architecture. By developing a visual connection between the indoor and outdoor environments, Sejima displays an understanding of social function and activities. In 1995, Sejima partnered with Ryue Nishizawa to found SANAA. Together they have designed innovative and internationally acclaimed art museums characterised by an airy architectural aesthetic. SANAA’s notable works include the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, the New Museum in New York, and the Rolex Learning Center in Switzerland. Sejima was an international fellow of RIBA in 2007 and was awarded Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France in 2009. She was also a recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize together with Ryue Nishizawa in 2010.
 

Ryue Nishizawa
Ryue Nishizawa is a renowned Japanese architect whose architectural projects are characterised by refined simplicity, spatial fluidity, and clever integration with the surroundings. After completing a master’s degree in architecture at the Yokohama National University in 1990, Nishizawa worked with Kazuyo Sejima at Sejima and Associates, co-founding SANAA with Sejima in 1995. The same year, in parallel with earning international recognition for SANAA’s institutional projects such as the O-Museum (1995–1999), Nishizawa set up a studio for smaller, experimental projects. The Moriyama House (2002–2005) and Garden and House (2013) in Tokyo are two widely known projects demonstrating both Nishizawa’s architectural experimentation as well as his interest in an alternative urban living model. Nishizawa also designed the Towada Art Centre in Aomori (2008) and collaborated with artist Rei Naito for the design of the Teshima Art Museum, a building that resembles a droplet of water hugging the island’s hills and was opened in 2010 in time for the first ever Setouchi International Art Festival. Ryue Nishizawa was recognised with a Gold Lion award at the 9th Venice Architecture Biennale in 2004, and in 2010 became the youngest recipient of the Pritzker Prize, when he was recognised together with Kazuyo Sejima.
 

Akiko Miki
Former Chief and Senior Curator at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2000–2014), Akiko Miki currently works as International Artistic Director of Benesse Art Site Naoshima. Miki was the co-director (Artistic) of the Yokohama Triennale 2017 and served as the Artistic Director of its 2011 edition. She has curated and co-curated major exhibitions in both Asia and Europe, including TransCulture at the 46th Venice Biennale (1995), Site of Desire at the Taipei Biennial (1998), Nobuyoshi Araki: Self-Life-Death at the Barbican Centre in London (2005), Chalo! India: A New Era of Indian Art (2008) and Takashi Murakami: The 500 Arhats (2015) at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, Our Magic Hour at the Yokohama Triennale (2011), Hiroshi Sugimoto: Today the world died (2014), Takashi Murakami’s Superflat Collection— from Shōhaku and Rosanjin to Anselm Kiefer (2016) and Islands, Constellations & Galapagos at the Yokohama Triennale (2017). She has authored and edited numerous books, including Insular Insight (Lars Müller, 2011), which received the DAM Architectural Book Award.