Miho Museum
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The Miho Museum (Miho Museum) is located near the town of Shigaraki-no-Sato in the Shiga Prefecture of Japan, northeast of Kyoto. The museum was the dream of Mihoko Koyama (after whom it is named), the heiress to the Toyobo textile business, and one of the richest women in Japan. In 1970 Koyama founded the Shinji Shumeikai spiritual movement (see Shumei) which is now said to have some 300,000 members worldwide. Furthermore, in the 1990's Koyama commissioned the museum to be built close to the Shumei temple in the Shiga mountains.
[edit] Collection
The Miho Museum houses Mihoko Koyama's private collection of Asian and Western antiques, as well as other pieces with an estimated value of between US$300 million to US$1 billion, bought on the world market by the Shumei organisation in the years before the museum was opened in 1997. There are over two thousand pieces in total, of which approximately 250 are displayed at any one time.
Each exhibit in the Miho Museum was carefully selected as much for its artistic beauty as its historical significance, and the careful attention is paid to how the collection is displayed.
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[edit] Architecture
The renowned architect I. M. Pei had earlier designed the bell tower at Misono, the international headquarters and spiritual centre of the Shumei organisation. Happy with the results of this collaboration, Mihoko Koyama and her daughter, Hiroko Koyama, again commissioned Pei to design the Miho. The bell tower at Misono can be seen from the windows of the Miho museum.
I. M. Pei's design, which he came to call Shangri-La, is executed in a hilly and forested landscape. Approximately three quarters of the 45,000 square meter building is situated underground, carved out of a rocky mountaintop. The roof is a large glass and steel construction, while the exterior and interior walls and floor are made of a warm beige-coloured limestone from France – the same material used by Pei in the reception hall of the Louvre. Compared to marble, it creates a softer atmosphere and a more relaxed lightness. The colours of the stone, the silver space frame, the textured louvers and the vegetation outside counterbalance each other aiming to create an impression of harmony.
Perhaps the most spectacular part of Pei's achievement, however, is the approach to the hilltop "paradise". Arriving at the site, visitors first see a modest reception pavilion amid cedar trees, facing a circular courtyard, which is frequently mistaken for the museum building. Opposite this begins a wide curved walkway lined with peach trees that leads to the mouth of a stainless-steel-lined tunnel cut into a ridge. The tunnel is a 200-meter curve, silent and echoless, and the comes to an end with the cables of a half suspension bridge cantilevered 120 meters across a deep, narrow gorge. From here the visitor finally sees the Chinese-style moon-gate entrance to the museum pavilion.
