Museums are out to amuse

Today is Museum Day. Don’t groan. There’s an exposition underway in Bangkok to mark the occasion, and it includes, among many other things, rather nifty toys that His Majesty the King played with as a boy, and a Japanese camera the size of a matchbox, suitable for espionage, one imagines. 

You can see a folding leather chair that King Rama I carried on field trips and the country’s first lottery-draw numbers – made of wood, of course.

“Amazing Thai Museums”, the Thailand Museum Expo 2016 at the National Museum, blows the dust off old perceptions of history’s storehouses as enthusiasm-crushing bores. The Culture Ministry has trotted out some fascinating items and some gorgeous ones, like Qing vases and century-old Mon Buddhist scriptures written in Pali. 

The six-day show ending on Wednesday is intended to get more Thais visiting museums, and especially kids, who the government believes should be spending less time in classrooms and more time learning elsewhere.

“We aim to make museums educational centres beyond the classroom,” National Museum director Phnombootra Chandrajoti confirms.

Meanwhile the separate exhibition “In the Limelight: A Selection of Our Museums’ Finest Pieces” – continuing at Issara Winitchai Hall inside the museum compound until the end of the month – boasts 100 treasures from 42 museums and private collections.

Marking the King’s 70th anniversary on the throne as well as Her Majesty the Queen’s 84th birthday, it’s devoted largely to his life. Permanently preserved within the palace are the rockets he played with in his youth, a radio-controlled car, a model helicopter and a very cool “Visible Man” anatomy kit from the US. One of the silver cigarette boxes given away as souvenirs of Their Majesties’ wedding is on view, as is a coffee set hand-painted by Her Royal Highness the late Princess Mother. 

Other intriguing pieces on display include clay Buddha amulets from the Dvaravati Period, between 1,000 and 1,200 years ago, and a Talipat fan an of carved ivory decorated with gems, used in royal merit-making rites. 

In the segment called “Thai Beliefs”, the book “Samut Thai Dam” (“Strategies of War”) boasts beautiful drawings of Siamese triumphs on the battlefield. “Thai Society and Economy” has those original wooden lottery-draw pieces, “doubly” interesting with their Thai characters on one side and Chinese characters on the other. 

For the “Fine Art and Crafts” section, there are the late Misiem Yipinsoi’s bronze masterpiece “Skipping Rope”, Qing Dynasty vases and a wax likeness of Silpa Bhirasri, “the father of modern Thai art”, as well as a portrait of esteemed former statesman Kukrit Pramoj with his beloved dogs.

Booths are set up around the expo, lending a lively fair ambience, with rare examples of crafts, books and other items presented in an innovative way. More than 60 museums have contributed, and their representatives are using the expo as a platform to share ideas and experiences in museology through discussions and seminars.

The Suk Sasom Museum churns up the nostalgia with an assembly of cute tin cars and plastic dolls at its booth, and Museum Siam is catering to the hungry with servings of fresh somtam. Its interactive display “The Buffet” is an educational survey of Thai cuisine.

Thailand is home to thousands of museums, variously operated by the government, local communities and individual enthusiasts.

King Rama IV is credited with establishing the first proper museum in Siam. His Raja Rudi Palace became his private museum, where ambassadors and other foreign guests were invited to view his personal belongings and items he collected as a monk and on his travels. In 1856 he had a royal museum built to house more.

When his son Chulalongkorn ascended the throne as Rama V, he became the first Siamese monarch to travel abroad, twice visiting Europe and acquiring all manner of foreign curiosities. To display these to the public he had the Concordia Museum (Saha Thai Samakom) build within the Grand Palace. 

It opened on September 19, 1874, a date that since 1995 has been annually commemorated as Thai Museum Day. King Chulalongkorn’s museum moved after 13 years to Bovorn Palace, where it remains to this day.

Despite this extensive history, museums in Thailand have made slow progress. The country has plenty of important treasures relative to some other Asian nations, most stored at the 41 national museums overseen by the Culture Ministry, but many of our museums are dusty, ill-tended repositories of forgotten and forgettable relics, as the experts assembling for the expo are well aware.

The government has recently allocated Bt100 million for refurbishing the national museums.

“We’re spending Bt50 million on renovations and adjustments, such as standardising the lighting and air-conditioning and improving the presentations to draw more visitors,” says Phnombootra of the Bangkok facility. An anthropology museum is also in the works for Pathum Thani, he notes.

“We will develop our audio guides as well and make more use of QR codes so people can use their smartphones.”

Meanwhile National Discover Museum Institute or Museum Siam near Wat Pho is a baby among the country’s venerable institutions at just 11 years of age, and yet in that time it’s seen more than eight million Thai and foreign visitors. It’s now broadening its use of technology and interactive displays, aiming to bring in the younger generations.

Museum Siam recently launched the website MuseumThailand.com and a phone app that delivers regular updates on more than 1,470 museums, art centres and community facilities around the Kingdom. Director Rames Promyen says Museum Siam is keen to help the government usher in the “Thailand 4.0” era.

“Technology is a key part of our daily lives, and Museum Siam will be focusing on the ‘iMuseum’ concept, embracing the three i’s – interactive, intelligent and international,” he says. “We aim to top 250,000 visitors this year with innovative presentations and activities, museum nights and Muse Mobile. And we’re going to do all of this with a budget of only Bt34 million!”

The hi-tech approach might well arouse public interest, says Rames, but sustainable development is the key to establishing a lasting appreciation for museums.

“We hope to build networking and sharing information about museology with other museums in Thailand in order to make everyone equally knowledgeable.”

 

THERE’S MORE THAN JUST DISPLAYS

- The Thailand Museum Expo 2016 “Amazing Thai Museums” continues through Wednesday, daily from 9 to 6, at the National Museum near Thammasat University’s Tha Phra campus. 

- Find out more at www.MuseumExpo2016.org 

(Thai only)

 

SEMINARS

Today, 2pm: “The Charm of Museums” with representatives from the Wat Khanon Shadow Puppet Museum, Royal Barge Museum, Royal Police Museum, Woodland Muang Mai Museum and Museum of Bangkok.

Tomorrow, 3pm: Academics from Chulalongkorn, Mahidol and Silpakorn universities will discuss museology in Thailand.

Wednesday, 2pm: “Innovations in Exhibition Design” with representatives from Right Man, Plan Motif, CMO, Rukluk and Seum Works.

 

The exhibition “In The Limelight: A Selection of Our Museums’ Finest Pieces” continues at Issara Winitchai Hall until September 30.