Turning obscure islands into art havens

Intriguing article by the Guardian's Justin McCurry about plans by entrepreneur Soichiro Fukutake to turn several islands in Japan's Seto Inland Sea into art museums.

Each exhibition room in the museum is tailor-made for individual works. The five Monet paintings, for example, hang on creamy white walls made from the plaster that was used in old Japanese castles. The floor is covered with 700,000 cubes of Italian marble. Stretching across an entire wall is Monet's Water-Lily Pond (1915-1926), which Mr Fukutake bought after seeing it at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts in 1998.

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Mr Fukutake, 58, has other ambitions for the islands of the Seto inland sea, many of which are underpopulated and accessible only by patchy ferry services. The businessman, who owns an international chain of English-language schools, hopes to open a museum on Inujima - which he also owns - and then tackle the aesthetic wasteland of Teshima, for years an illegal dump for industrial waste.

Guardian Unlimited | Arts news | Japan's lord of the isles puts art hoard on show at visionary museum