Asahi beer Oyamazaki Villa Museum
Asahi Beer Oyamazaki Villa Museum of Art is located in Oyamazaki-cho, Otokuni-gun, Kyoto, Japan. Its main building is an old English villa which was built by a wealthy business man, Shotaro KAGA, in the tudor gothic style from 1912 to 1932. It is uniquely decorated with his taste of Japanese and the other east Asian ornaments.[1]
Tadao ANDO, who established himself as one of the leading architects in the world, built its annex building. The main part of the annex building is half buried underground reflecting his concept of preserving nature as much as possible. The annex building is connected with the main one by his simple and dignified stair.
The museum's art collection consists of the decorative ceramic works of Mingei Folk art movement by Kanjiro KAWAI, Shoji HAMADA and Bernard LEACH, and several paintings of water-lilies by a French impressionist, Claude MONET. Besides exhibiting the collection, the museum regularly holds exhibitions in which contemporary artists exhibit their new site specific works or Mingei's new aspects are disclosed.