We’ll need more paint

Thai art will have a much bigger canvas this year as more museums, galleries and smaller spaces for “alternative art” open across the Kingdom. Give thanks to the private sector, which is footing the bill for all the new venues. 

We have a longer wait than anticipated, however, for the opening of the Asean Culture Gateway, a Bt900-million museum being erected as part of the Culture Ministry’s new headquarters compound on Ratchadaphisek Road. It will be Thailand’s first such facility dedicated to contemporary art. 

The first phase of the Gateway was expected to open mid-year, but problems arose with the contractor, says Apinan Poshyananda, the ministry’s permanent secretary. 

“The ministry building and the museum are 70 per cent finished, but now the ministry will have to have another round of bidding to find a construction firm that can finish the project before the Prayut administration’s term ends. Hopefully we’ll open the office building by the end of this year.”

Meanwhile the bulk of the ministry’s collection remains in storage, and training continues for museum managerial staff.

“The ministry has more than 700 works of modern and contemporary art,” Apinan says. “This year alone the Office of Contemporary Art Department will spend Bt21 million buying new works and my office will add Bt10 million more.” He and his team are off to Singapore this week to view the new Bt13.7-billion National Gallery there.

It’s not as though we have no art to admire while the government sorts out its predicament, though. Private citizens are keen to share their collections with the general public.

The bulk of the anticipation rests with the Mai Iam Contemporary Art Museum, scheduled to open on July 3 in Baan Ton Pao in Chiang Mai’s Sankampheng district. This unassuming locale a 15-minute drive from the city and the airport is where Eric Bunnag Booth and his parents – Patsri Bunnag and stepfather Jean Michel Beurdeley of the Jim Thompson silk firm – are preparing a 3,000-square-metre facility.

They’ll have on view their own holdings of more than 600 artworks, amassed over the last 25 years, and the grand opening will feature a retrospective on celebrated filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul. 

Prominent architecture firm allzone, led by Rachaporn Choochuey, designed the museum, which boasts a 40-seat cinema, a workshop for educational programmes, a library, a restaurant and a gift shop. 

“Our main objective is to have a permanent collection of contemporary Thai art on display at all times over 1,300 square metres,” says Eric. 

“In no way does our collection represent the whole history of Thai contemporary art – it represents just our own point of view, based on the sole criterion of the emotional response the works give us. A work of art exists as a result the artist’s creativity, but also in the emotional response it produces in the viewer.”

Along with video installations by Apichatpong, the family also collects works by Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook, Pinaree Sanpitak, Vasan Sithiket and the late Montien Boonma.

The Mai Iam will add additional colour to the northern cultural hub already vibrant with arts and crafts. Chiang Mai became home a couple of years ago to private collector Disaphol Chansiri’s museum, located in the city itself, with works by Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Yoshitomo Nara, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Chatchai Puipia and Montien.

“Mai Iam means ‘brand new’,” says Eric, “and in our case it refers to Chiang Mai – ‘new city’ – and to my great-grandmother’s aunt, Chao Chom Iam, to whom the museum is dedicated. The dialogue between old and new interests us very much, and you encounter it all the time in Chiang Mai.”

Jumping from North to South, in August Klaomas Yipintsoi and her photographer-husband Nopadon Kaosam-ang will open Misium’s museum in downtown Songkhla.

Set in a gathering of well-preserved old houses, Misium’s takes its name from the late Misium Yipintsoi and will show her works that have long been stored at the Misium Sculpture Garden in Sam Phran, Nakhon Pathom. Her granddaughter, Klaomas, decided to relocate some of the works after one of them, “Coy Girl” – the piece Misium was working on at the time of her death in 1988 – went missing at the end of 2014.

Klaomas and Nopadol have spent years restoring the venerable buildings in the compound and occasionally organise art shows and concerts, much as they formerly did at their About Studio/About Cafe in Bangkok’s Yaowarat district. That spot in Chinatown was a pioneer in Thai contemporary art in the late 1990s.

Misium’s in Songkhla will open with a Navin Rawanchaikul solo exhibition, complete with a site-specific installation.

Also in the capital, towards the end of the year, Bangkok University president Petch Osathanugrah will unveil the Bt100-million Art Warehouse on Ramkhamhaeng Road. A place to house his collection of more than 500 works, the ultra-modern building is designed by Pitupong Chaowakul of Supermachine. He is the recent winner of the grand prize in annual awards sponsored by the London-based journal Architectural Review. The honour was bestowed for the 10 Cal Tower that Pitupong dreamed up for SCG. Pitupong’s other creations include the iconic Diamond Building at Bangkok University’s Rangsit campus.

The art warehouse covers 2,000 square metres on a four-rai property near Rajamangala National Stadium.

“While we’re waiting for my O Museum to be completed on Rama IV Road sometime in the next few years, this warehouse will serve to display my collection,” Petch says. “We’ll also have a studio for which I’ll be hiring a foreign conservator to make repairs to the pieces as needed.”