Yasuda Kan Sculpture Museum Arte Piazza Bibai is a unique open-air art space where sculpture, architecture, and the natural landscape of Hokkaido come together. The name “Arte Piazza” is Italian for “art square.” Rather than a conventional museum building, the site was created by renovating a former elementary school and its gymnasium, transforming a place once filled with the sounds of children into a peaceful setting for art.
The museum occupies an expansive site of approximately 30,000 square meters. More than 40 sculptures by world-renowned sculptor Kan Yasuda, who was born in Bibai, are displayed throughout the grounds. The collection includes monumental works weighing more than 10 tons, as well as sculptures carved from marble and cast in bronze.
Including the surrounding forest and natural landscape, the area has grown into an approximately 70,000-square-meter outdoor sculpture park. Sculptures are placed among trees, lawns, paths, and open spaces, allowing visitors to experience each work in changing natural surroundings rather than viewing art in an enclosed gallery.
The combination of massive stone and bronze sculptures with the quiet forest creates a distinctive atmosphere. Light, shadows, greenery, snow, and the changing seasons continually alter the way the sculptures appear, making a walk through the grounds itself part of the artistic experience.
The former wooden school building has been given a new role while retaining the atmosphere of its original architecture. The first floor is used as a kindergarten, while the second floor serves as a gallery displaying sculptures.
The former gymnasium has also been renovated as a cultural space, hosting exhibitions, concerts, and other events throughout the year. The site demonstrates how an unused school can be transformed into a place where art, education, culture, and community life continue to thrive.
Arte Piazza Bibai also includes dedicated spaces for cultural activities. Lectures, dance performances, and other events are held in the art spaces and on an outdoor stone stage made from marble.
These spaces make particularly effective use of the surrounding landscape, allowing visitors to experience art and performance while surrounded by the forests and open skies of Bibai.
At Studio Arte, visitors can take part in “Kokoro wo Horu Jugyo,” or “A Class for Sculpting the Heart.” The program encourages participants to express and give physical form to their own inner thoughts and feelings through sculpture.
Rather than simply looking at works created by a professional artist, this experience offers an opportunity to engage directly with the creative process and discover the pleasure of shaping something with one’s own hands.
Cafe Arte provides a relaxing place to take a break during a visit. Surrounded by the quiet atmosphere of the former school and the natural landscape, visitors can enjoy fragrant coffee and spend some unhurried time taking in the scenery.
Bibai was once one of Japan’s major coal-mining towns. The city developed around coal production, but all of its mines eventually closed as Japan underwent its postwar energy transition.
Arte Piazza Bibai represents a remarkable new chapter in that history. By making use of the site of a former school, the project transformed a reminder of the area’s changing past into a place devoted to art, education, culture, and connection with nature.
Yasuda Kan Sculpture Museum Arte Piazza Bibai offers an experience that goes beyond visiting an ordinary art museum. Monumental sculptures, a historic wooden school, a former gymnasium, forests, and open spaces form one continuous artistic landscape.
For travelers interested in contemporary sculpture, architecture, Japanese regional history, or simply quiet places where art can be enjoyed at a leisurely pace, Arte Piazza Bibai is a memorable destination in the countryside of Hokkaido.
9:00-17:00
Cafe Arte 10:00-17:00
Tuesdays
Day after national holidays (except Sunday)
December 31 - January 3
Free of charge
15 min. by bus from Bibai Stn.