The National Museum of Art, Osaka

This guide to the National Museum of Art, Osaka begins with a puzzle: standing in front of the building, you can't actually see it. It follows architect Cesar Pelli's bamboo-inspired steel sculpture that marks the entrance, then the engineering problem the city faced trying to bury an art museum in ground that had no bedrock underneath, only soft soil pushing up like water beneath a beach ball. Stand at that gleaming sculpture before you head down toward the galleries.