An increasingly number of urban hubs are creating special spaces to refresh the soul. The Business Traveller team recommends some of the most interesting to date.
Your brain is reeling from facts and figures. It wants out of the boardroom and a break from all that shop talk. It wants to be stimulated by light and colour, and creative forms and shapes. Fortunately, today’s urban hubs are taking design and culture more seriously, ploughing hefty investment in public spaces and facilities that provide a breather from the uniformly concrete landscape. A museum or gallery, or even a sculpture-dotted park, is now usually accessible to (if not located in) many central business districts, which makes it easier for business travellers to get their art fix.
Virtually every city in the region boasts of some interesting place to refresh the eye and soul. We think the participants in our line-up fit the bill perfectly. Go see.
BANGKOK
BANGKOK ART AND CULTURE CENTRE
Thailand’s cultural scene marked a milestone in February when the finishing touches were reached on this long-awaited 11-storey modern Thai-style structure dedicated to promoting the visual, performing and musical arts among the young.
Its location on 25,000sqm of the Pathumwan Junction – opposite MBK Centre and Siam Discovery at the National Stadium BTS Station – weighed heavily in the decision to establish such a facility. The complex brings balance to an environment choked with commercial buildings and department stores as well as universities and academic institutions. Furthermore, it provides an ideal alternative to the usual activity of “malling” and aimless window shopping.
The vision that took a decade to fulfil was born in 1998 when then-Bangkok governor Pijit Rattakul appointed a committee to set up and judge a design competition for the centre. Robert G Boughey & Associates won the honours and went about creating a stimulating environment catering to budding artists consisting of a library, art studio, 300-seat multifunction space, 222-seat theatre for films and performances and a retail area.
The design of the centre reflects contemporary Thai architecture in both form and function, with special focus on a distinct traditional Thai silhouette. Boughey’s team achieved their goal through the tapering walls of the exteriors, arched roof and other components applying classical Thai detailing together with age-old construction techniques. The project was completed for a little under 600 million baht (US$19.16 million).
The centre’s modern features harmonise with the surrounding architecture by developing a hybrid between an exhibition area and a commercial zone at the building’s centre, as seen in the cylindrical open space which catches the eyes of passers-by, directing their view to the second floor where the museum is located.
Before the grand opening in July, the centre used 5 million baht (US$159,669) of its 20 million baht (US$638,677) budget last month to host an exhibition featuring paintings by His Majesty the King. About 14 million baht (US$447,074) has been earmarked for annual activities including musical performances, theatre and art programmes.
Prominent Thai curators are conceptualising and leading art and cultural activities and initiatives that appeal to a range of interests. Well-known talents include Dr Apinand Posayanond, Chumphol Apisuk, Apisak Sonjod, Ithiphol Tangchalok, Sutee Kunavitchayanont, Tavorn Koudomvit, Sanser Milintasutre, Krittiya Kaweewongse and Prathan Theerathada.
The Bangkok city government is actively pursuing agreements with their counterparts abroad renowned for their art, and has already secured several masterpieces for the formal launch. On exhibit will be a piece from Milan by Leonardo da Vinci, art from Liverpool, porcelain from Beijing and work from Fukuoka.
The centre’s debut on one of the city’s trendiest intersections is expected to enhance the intellectual energies of Thailand’s youth seeking growth in their personal paths and a stake in the collective future of the Kingdom.
GETTING THERE: Hop onto the BTS National Stadium line. It’s on the Pathumwan Junction, opposite MBK Centre and Siam Discovery.
OPENING HOURS: Still to be finalised.
CONTACT: Rama Road 1, Bangkok, Thailand. For pre-opening details, call the Department of Culture, Sport and Tourism at 66 2 247 2333.
David Johnson
BEIJING
RED GATE GALLERY
This wonderful gallery, located in a Ming dynasty guard tower, exhibits the works of younger, well-known, contemporary Chinese artists as the market for Chinese art heats up around the world. Red Gate Gallery was established in 1991 by Brian Wallace, an Australian, who studied art history at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. Wallace first came to China in 1986 to study Chinese, and in 1988 began organising his first exhibitions for young Chinese artists. This eventually led to the birth of Red Gate.
Wallace says he has “a pretty eclectic bunch of artists in the stable, including younger ones who are just getting started”, as well as some well-established artists. He says that the diverse media of the artists exhibited at Red Gate reflects their awareness of China’s ever-changing society.
“Through traditional Chinese painting, collage, lithographs and oil painting, Red Gate’s artists are supplying a social commentary on the political, economical and cultural transformations within contemporary Chinese society,” he explains.
He believes his long association with artists around China makes it possible for the gallery to introduce Chinese art to interested buyers. Wallace says he first asks customers why they are buying: for investment, putting together a collection of Chinese art or for a memory of one’s trip to China. “Understanding the need is very important.”
Red Gate stages up to eight solo shows a year, complemented by guest-curated exhibitions from China and overseas.
The space, as much as the art, will excite the visitor. Red Gate is located in the magnificent Dongbianmen Watchtower, the last remaining Ming Dynasty watchtower in the city, which is worth a visit on its own. It is within easy walking distance of the Ancient Observatory and the Ming Dynasty City Wall Ruins Park.
In 2005, Red Gate opened another gallery in the Dashanzi Art District in northern Beijing. More popularly known as the 798 Factory, Dashanzi Art District is home to galleries, cafés and restaurants set up in a complex of old Bauhaus-style factories.
Most of the manufacturers pulled out of here in the 1990s after business went into a downward spiral, and a number of China’s finest artists, attracted by the sprawling premises, low rents and the natural light flooding in via the large overhead windows, began grabbing up the abandoned factory sites.
GETTING THERE: Take the Jianguomen or Chongwenmen line or a taxi.
OPENING HOURS: 1000 to 1700 daily.
CONTACT: Levels 1 and 4, Dongbianmen Watchtower,?Chongwen District,? Beijing, China, tel?86 10 6525 1005, www.redgategallery.com
Paul Mooney
KYOTO
KYOTO INTERNATIONAL MANGA MUSEUM
Finding a world-class museum in Kyoto – Japan’s acknowledged cultural centre – is not a difficult task. “Like shooting fish in a barrel” is one phrase that springs to mind. For example, our neighbourhood, Okazaki alone features the Museum of Contemporary Art, Kyoto Municipal Museum, Hosomi Museum, Harada Kampo Bahal Gallery and the Sumitomo Collection. All are magnificent.
Yet until now, finding a truly original and forward-looking museum in this bastion of conservative high-culture has not been quite so simple.
Enter the Kyoto International Manga Museum, the latest and most highly successful addition to Kyoto’s artistic and cultural heritage.
Long gone are the days when ivory-tower academics could pooh-pooh manga as visual opiates for an illiterate generation. As the museum’s collection ably illustrates, the clumsily scrawled nerd-fodder associations simply no longer apply. The medium has gone mainstream – and how.
Manga are now used in all walks of Japanese life, to cover everything from post-operative recovery techniques to corporate sales strategies. In 2000, the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, not exactly renowned for its levity, declared manga “a key art field” and duly introduced study of the media into the high-school curriculum.
And rightly is the museum proud of its academic and civic role. A joint endeavour by Kyoto Seika University and the city government, it opened in November 2006 on a prime location in the city centre. Creatively housed in what was formerly a primary school, the museum’s mandate is to collect, preserve and “disseminate manga culture to the world”. Clearly this is no mere comic library.
And what’s more, it is great fun. Storytellers recreate the bygone stories of kami-shibai, the pre-war manga-on-paper street performance, while wall posters explain its journey from populist entertainment to wartime propaganda tool. Manga artists sketch delighted foreign visitors. Mothers read Doraemon and Anpanman to their delighted offspring in that rainy-day godsend, the children’s reading room.
In the basement, the research collection showcases the proto-manga of the Japanese 13th century, and hilarious caricatures by Ukiyo-e master Hokusai Katsushika. Throughout the building stretches the “Manga Wall”, displaying 50,000 examples from countries around the globe.
Since its inception a little over a year ago, this has fast become one of the city’s most popular attractions, with some 15 percent of its 230,000 visitors to date from overseas.
GETTING THERE: Signs in the Karasuma-Oike subway station will point you in the right direction. Just a few minutes’ walk.
OPENING HOURS: 1000 to 2200 daily but closed Wednesday. Admission for adults is 500 yen (US$5), junior/senior high school students is 300 yen (US$3) and elementary school students is 100 yen (US$1).
CONTACT: 452 Kanafuki-cho, Tsuuoike-noboru, Ryougae-cho, Chukyo-ku, Kyoto-shi, Japan, www.kyotomm.com/eng
John Ashburne
SINGAPORE
OSAGE
It’s a safe bet that for most of us, visiting the principal’s office does not bring back a flood of happy memories. Osage Singapore, however, is hoping to change that.
Osage, the well-known Hongkong-based gallery that showcases contemporary Asian art, has taken over three spaces at the former Methodist Girls’ School (MGS) on Mount Sophia. Apart from the principal’s office, they have also taken over a classroom as well as the school auditorium. In total, they have about 817sqm at the place now known as Old School. The gallery opened in October last year.
Of the three spaces, the auditorium is probably the most interesting. It has a floor space of 424sqm and boasts a ceiling that is more than 3m high. There is also a viewing gallery as well. The space feels intimate but the high ceilings and light-filled space offer tremendous potential for doing interesting installations. The chance to get this space was one reason why Osage decided to set up shop at the Old School.
Isabel Ching, art specialist at Osage, explains: “We recognise the former MGS auditorium as a fantastic space for the presentation of art. It is a vast space with huge volumes and unique architecture with a viewing balcony, giving tremendous scope for exhibitions of large-scale contemporary work.
“The viewing balcony is also ideal for video screenings. All in all, it is an inspirational and challenging space which allows artists the opportunity to make site-specific works on a scale seldom seen in Singapore.”
The other reason for picking the place is the unique set up of Old School. The entire place has been turned into a creative hub. Apart from Osage, there are other galleries, artist studios, animation companies, advertising agencies and publishing companies. There is also a bistro, a small cinema showing local films and fashion boutique, Comme des Garçons. Old School is very close to Orchard Road and walking distance to the Plaza Singapura shopping mall.
Publicist Mabel Tay says: “Old School has that laid-back, intimate atmosphere yet we’re just a stone’s throw away from the city. It’s not Disney-fied or over curated, and maintains most of what’s original of the conservation site. That’s what’s charming about the place.
“Our tenants love the ‘organic’ environment conducive to creativity and of the people who have visited us, many have become friends of Old School and are now frequent visitors, introducing more people to Old School. We’ve had quite a few requests for artistic collaborations which we are exploring.”
By grouping together different creative individuals and companies, it is becoming a destination in its own right, and the tenants are betting that this will drive more traffic to the picturesque but slightly out-of-the-way spot.
GETTING THERE: Take a taxi to Mt Sophia, which is accessible only from Sophia Road, off Selegie Road. Those who fancy the exercise can walk up the hill from Handy Road.
OPENING HOURS: 1000 to 1900 daily, including public holidays.
CONTACT: 11B Mt Sophia #01-12, Singapore 228466, tel 65 6337 9909, www.osagegallery.com
Jimmy Yap
SYDNEY
HYDE PARK BARRACKS MUSEUM
A short stroll from downtown hotels, Macquarie Street, on the business district’s eastern edge, begins alongside Hyde Park’s lush inner-city parkland and continues to Opera House perched dramatically on Sydney’s famed harbour. This is Sydney’s most historically significant boulevard: home to the New South Wales State Parliament, State Library, St James Church and Sydney Hospital (on its present site since 1811), as well as other grand buildings ranging from British-colonial sandstone to art deco to contemporary. High-rent territory, Macquarie Street remains location-of-choice for prominent medical specialists – an Antipodean version of London’s Harley Street.
Ambling from the offices, shops, malls and hotels of the commercial district, one arrives at Queens Square, outside a 191-year-old convict-built edifice: Hyde Park Barracks, now a museum. Bigger museums dot Australia’s biggest metropolis but this one’s specialist aim is highlighting the lifestyle of convicts shipped from Britain, who were among Sydney’s earliest non-aboriginal inhabitants.
One of the city’s more popular museums, its exhibitions chronicle life aboard crowded convict hulks sailing to Australia with pathetic human cargoes: wretches who sometimes perished during at-sea privations. Replicas of hammock-like beds, strung in crowded rows, are backdrops for actors’ recordings of convicts’ words evoking the period’s extreme harshness. Try on the rusty ankle irons and step inside a claustrophobic punishment box – imagining a time when whippings and executions were routine events.
The building later became home to single female immigrants from Britain and Ireland, desperate in the mid-1800s for work as domestic servants. Some rooms showcase the hard lives of early women settlers. Subsequently, the barracks became an asylum for the mentally unbalanced among them. Later, it served as law courts and government offices before its re-birth as a museum more than 20 years ago.
Now enter a room where Catholicism’s local history is unveiled, with the aid of rare religious artefacts. Many of Sydney’s convicts were Irish Catholics and the city’s ornate St Mary’s Cathedral is but a block away.
Drawing a mix of locals and visitors to Hyde Park Barracks Museum is a series of exhibits about the New South Wales Volunteer Rifles, a unit based at the building from 1860 to 1870. It was formed as a response to an oddball and ultimately unfounded fear that Czarist Russia would attack. In the absence of such an assault, volunteers fulfilled a mainly ceremonial role. The exhibition oozes with colourful displays of uniforms and regalia, along with rifles, bayonets and other memorabilia.
GETTING THERE: Head for the northern end of Hyde Park. Stroll up Martin Place which dead-ends at Macquarie Street. Turn right and walk two blocks. St James Train Station on the City Circle Line is five minutes away.
OPENING HOURS: 0930 am to 1700 daily but closed on Christmas Day and Good Friday. Entry is A$10 (US$9).
CONTACT: Queens Square, Macquarie Street, Sydney, New South Wales 2000, Australia, tel 61 2 8239 2311, www.hht.net.au
Chris Pritchard
TAIPEI
NATIONAL PALACE MUSEUM
In a mountainous green suburb of Taipei sits the National Palace Museum, the greatest collection of Chinese art on earth. What more needs to be said? Actually, there is more – last year, the museum emerged from a US$21 million renovation that added a bright new lobby, a wonderful new souvenir shop, and roomier, better-lit displays. Many of the exhibits were put in chronological order, beginning with the Stone Age and moving toward modernity, instead of arranged by type, as they were before.
Yet, as welcome as the renovations are, the building is not the star of the show – the art collection is. Consider its history: the pieces were hustled around China for 20 years starting in the late 1920s, as the government tried to keep them away from invading Japanese troops. The peerless collection went from Beijing to Nanjing, then to Changsha, Guiyang, Chengdu and finally Emei, in the remote western mountains, each time narrowly escaping
the Japanese. Then, the Chinese Civil War erupted, and on a rainy day in 1949, at a dock in Nanjing, the collection was shipped to Taiwan, where it was stored. The next chapter was written in the 1960s, when Taiwan built the National Palace Museum, and put the glorious artworks on display.
And there they remain, a jaw-dropping collection of sheer, overwhelming perfection. All the pieces are whole, complete and near-perfect. The jade ax blades are almost flawless, the stone tools are intact, the earrings are 7,000 years old, and the ceramics, bronzes and paintings are wonderfully executed and perfectly preserved. This strategy – to display only the finest art in existence – typifies the museum’s approach. Everything on display here is the best there is. And why not? The National Palace has 654,500 pieces to choose from.
Of special interest to post-renovation visitors is a remarkable permanent exhibit called Dazzling Gems of the Collection: Famous Pieces from the Qing Dynasty Palaces. This is the “greatest hits” collection, and here, in a darkened room, each artwork has its own dedicated display case, and yes, they shine like Dazzling Gems. The works are displayed against maroon backgrounds, and each one is subtly and beautifully lit.
For example, Court String of Eastern Pearls, a necklace that any Hollywood diva would die for, is placed on a black background and precisely lit, so that each gem sparkles. The cases themselves glow like jewels, and the pieces – jade, lapis lazuli, gold and ceramics – are perfectly displayed. This room is home to the famous Jadeite Cabbage with Insects, a piece so famous that it is called the Mona Lisa of the collection. Here too is the ever-popular Meat-Shaped Stone, a carved piece of banded jasper that looks like fresh stewed pork.
As in the rest of the museum, detailed signs in several languages, including English, add greatly to the experience. After 48 years of operation, the National Palace has finally created a worthy setting for its unrivalled art collection.
GETTING THERE: A taxi from downtown Taipei takes about 15 to 20 minutes.
OPENING HOURS: Daily. English tours are conducted at 1000 and 1500.
CONTACT: 221 Chih-Shan Road, Sec 2, Wai-shuang-his, Taipei, Taiwan, tel 886 2 2881 2021, www.npm.gov.tw
Brent Hannon
TOKYO
ROPPONGI ART TRIANGLE
The streets of Tokyo’s Roppongi district used to be synonymous with drunken salarymen and lap dancing clubs. But in recent years it has transformed, and alongside sleek mega shopping/dining complexes such as Roppongi Hills and Midtown, art has arrived in a big way.
The three corners of the resulting newly named “art triangle” are The National Art Centre, Suntory Museum of Art and Mori Art Museum. Together, they have brought world-famous art and cutting-edge exhibitions.
Mori is set on the 53rd floors of the Mori Tower, part of the glittering Roppongi Hills complex. A state-of-the-art gallery, it focuses on a range of modern Asian artists often specialising in architecture, photography and design. It also runs a Public Programme, a range of educational activities that allow children, students and local resident to engage with the art on display.
Suntory aims to present art from across the ages and continents, to challenge visitors to make new connections between old and new, east and west. One recent exhibition included collections celebrating “Japanese female mode” – gorgeous kimono and accessories and Edo woodprints of Japanese beauty, while the museum is currently displaying the works of 19th-century artist Toulouse-Lautrec. Suntory also contains a beautiful tea-ceremony room which mixes traditional materials with a design by lauded architect Kengo Kuma. For 1,000 yen (US$10), visitors can experience the ceremony, enjoying tea and traditional Japanese sweets.
The National Art Center is unusual in as much as it does not keep a permanent collection. Instead, it uses its soaring
14,000sqm of glass and metal, the largest in Japan, to offer innovative and ever-changing exhibits. The mixture of dramatic architecture and well-chosen art is proving popular – a Monet exhibition had visitors queuing around the block. Alongside the masters, the centre challenges with subjects such as Skin + Bones: Parallel Practices in Fashion and Architecture.
GETTING THERE: The nearest metro stations are Roppongi (on the Oedo and Hibiya line) or Nogizaka (on the Chiyoda line).
OPENING HOURS: The National Art Center, Tokyo is open 1000 to 1600 daily. Mori Art Museum is open 1000 to 1700 daily except Tuesday. Suntory Museum of Art is open Sunday, Monday and national holidays 1000 to 1800, Wednesday to Saturday 1000 to 1600. A discount ticket called Atro Saving, which offers discounts on two galleries when one is visited at full price.
CONTACT: tel 81 3 5777 8600, www.nact.jp/english; tel 81 3 5777 8600, www.mori.art.museum/eng; tel 81 3 3479 8600, www.suntory.com/culture-sports/sma
Kate Graham
