Art collectors and private museums are key to today’s art scene, contributing to an ever-thriving art landscape around the world. They are also at the core of LARRY’S LIST’s continuous effort in connecting them with a greater audience, such as the ongoing editorial series Private Museum Insights, The Private Museum Conference (2017 – 2019), as well as The Private Art Pass (2016 – 2019).
Here are some recommendations of private art museums for those who are longing to travel to some mesmerizing art destinations.
Benesse Art Site Naoshima, Japan
Japanese art collector Hideaki Fukutake, currently Representative Director of Fukutake Foundation and his father Soichiro Fukutake have transformed islands ravaged by industrialisation in Japan’s Seto Inland Sea into Benesse Art Site Naoshima, a captivating destination for art lovers and high-profile collectors from around the world, such as François Pinault, Dakis Joannou, and Eli Broad. Through collecting and displaying art from a great variety of artists, Hideaki Fukutake wishes to build a new set of values, a new way of seeing and thinking, and ultimately create a new culture.
Read related interview: How to Build an Art Lover’s Utopia: The Story of Hideaki Fukutake
After the creation of the LUMA Foundation in 2004, Maja Hoffmann launched the LUMA Arles project in 2013 on the Parc des Ateliers. This creative campus offers artists new perspectives for creation, collaboration, and presentation of their work to the public. The Tower designed by Frank Gehry and seven former factories from the 19th century industrial heritage interact in perfect harmony. The Tower with its silvery surface reflecting the bright southern sunlight, together with its peculiar form, instantly became the contemporary landmark in the historic town of Arles.
Designed by Ateliers Jean Nouvel, TAG Art Museum was founded in 2019 and opened to the public in 2021. Strung along a covered promenade that weaves through planted gardens and woodland, running along the coastline towards a new marina, the structures consist of 12 interconnected exhibition halls. Outside the exhibition galleries, there is a 1,200-meter coastline, 80,000-square-meter greening, 28 public art display spots, a 500-meter corridor and 8 lakes. The structure provide dynamics and a unique coastal vibe.
Looking for a serene and contemplative environment appreciate art, architecture and nature? Glenstone should be your top choice. Established in 2006 by Emily and Mitch Rales, Glenstone integrates its modern and contemporary art collection with the nature and offers nearly 300 acres of landscape with scattered outdoor sculptures by various artists like Richard Serra, Felix Gonzalez-Torres and others. In addition to the initial museum building, The Pavilions offers an additional 50,000 square feet of exhibition space that features changing exhibitions and rooms dedicated to single-artist installations. The 18,000 square foot water court at the center captures the colors and moments of seasonal change.
Perched on the shores of the Shoalhaven River, with Morton national park as a backdrop, the 1,000-hectare Boyd bushland estate of Bundanon was bequeathed by artist Arthur Boyd and his wife Yvonne to the Australian people in 1993. The new Bundanon art museum, which has been built to withstand extreme weather, with a net-zero carbon strategy, officially opened in March 2022. The new art space is a part-subterranean gallery carved in concrete into a hillock. Thermo cooling rods embedded 150 meters into the ground add to the comparatively low carbon footprint of the building.
Opened in Cape Town in September 2017. Zeitz MOCAA, Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA) is one of the world’s largest museums devoted to contemporary art from Africa, jointly developed by the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront and German businessman and art collector Jochen Zeitz, who holds what is considered by many to be the leading collection of contemporary art from Africa and its diaspora. Once the tallest building on the Cape Town skyline, the original industrial building was transformed into this unique, multi-award-winning architecture and an unprecedented art landmark in Cape Town.
Read related interview: How Jochen Zeitz Creates the World’s Largest Museum of Contemporary African Art
Founded by art collector Christen Sveaas, Kistefos was built on the grounds of a historical pulp mill built before by his grandfather. Today, it comprises an Industrial Museum, two art galleries, and an impressive sculpture park with 50 sculptures in scenic surroundings, notably with sculptures by Howard Hodgkin, Albert Oehlen, Christopher Wool, Keith Haring, and Martin Kippenberger, among others. The latest art gallery The Twist, opened in 2019, literally a twisted form of architecture stretched over a river in a forest in Norway — an art gallery, a bridge, and a sculpture all in one. It has won several awards for its cutting-edge design.
Read related interview: He Has Made a ‘Twist’ in a Norwegian Wood
Carlos Slim Helus’ Museo Soumaya in Mexico City was built in 2011 by his son-in-law Fernando Romero, and holds Helus’ private collection, which includes more than 70,000 pieces of art, including the largest number of works by sculptor Auguste Rodin outside France. The museum is 150-feet tall at the heart of a new cultural and commercial district in Mexico City. Its façade is made of 16,000 hexagonal aluminum plates, giving the building a distinctly different appearance depending on the weather, time of day and the viewer’s vantage point.
Another phenomenal destination to appreciate both art and nature simultaneously, the Inhotim was first built by Bernardo Paz in the 1980s to showcase his art collection to the public. Today, the garden, designed by landscape artist Ruberto Burle Marx, has an enormous size of 5,000 acres. It hosts one of the largest foundations of contemporary art in Brazil and the largest outdoor collection of contemporary art in Latin America. It houses over 1,300 artworks between the 1960s to the present in various media by over 100 renowned Brazilian and international artists.
Founded by art collectors Eli and Edythe Broad and in the vibrant art scene of Los Angeles, The Broad is one of the art destinations that actually worth the hype. The Broad is home to nearly 2,000 works of art in the Broad collection, which is one of the world’s leading collections of postwar and contemporary art, including two of Yayoi Kusama’s famed “Infinity Mirror Rooms” currently on display. The 120,000-square-foot building features two floors of gallery space and was designed by world-renowned architectural firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Gensler, with an innovative “veil-and-vault” concept.
Occupying a former Nabisco box-printing factory dated 1929 on the banks of the Hudson River, Dia Beacon presents the majority of Dia’s collection of art from the 1960s to the present, as well as special exhibitions, new commissions, and public and education programs. Since its opening in May 2003, Dia Beacon has helped transform the city of Beacon into a vibrant arts destination for art lovers and collectors from around the world. In keeping with Dia’s history of single-artist, site-related presentations, each gallery was designed specifically for the installation of one artist’s work.
The Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) is Australia’s largest private museum with three levels of underground galleries located of the banks of the Derwent river. It is the playground of art collector David Walsh and home home to his private collection, showcasing ancient objects, modernist masterpieces and contemporary art. The site also houses a vineyard and winery, several bars and restaurants, a craft brewery, luxury accommodation pavilions, library, cemetery and tennis court.
Located in Chiang Mai, a city in northern Thailand, MAIIAM showcases the private collection built together over the last 30 years by Jean Michel Beurdeley, his late wife Patsri Bunnag, and their son Eric Bunnag Booth. Their Collection Pipitmaya focuses on works created between 1995 and today by more than a dozen of Thailand’s leading artists. Opened in 2016, an old warehouse of 3000 square meters in the historic crafts district of Sankampang was dramatically transformed into a dynamic space. The main façade of the museum is cladded with thousands of small decorative mirror tiles that reflect light — a decorative technique inspired by traditional Thai temple architecture.
Read related interview: From Paris to Chiang Mai: Behind the New MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum in Thailand
The Villa Carmignac is part of the Fondation Carmignac, which owns a contemporary art collection of more than 300 works and was founded in 2000 by French entrepreneur Édouard Carmignac. The Villa Carmignac and its gardens is set at the heart of a National Park and on a listed site on Porquerolles island. Amid the Mediterranean forest in the middle of the sea, visitors can discover a Provençal farmhouse blended into the landscape, whose 2,000 square meters of exhibition galleries are lit by a ceiling of water, surrounded by a garden inhabited by some fifteen sculptures by Olaf Breuning, Jeppe Hein, Wang Keping and others.
By Ricko Leung
