Singapore: The ArtScience Museum

The Marina Bay Sands ArtScience Museum is the world’s first ArtScience museum, a concept born of the fashionable trend of placing two words together and adding an unnecessary capital letter in the middle. It is a remarkable piece of architecture - even if it does resemble an upside down bunch of bananas (the taxi driver knew what I meant). The contents were less impressive.

The Dali ‘Mind of a Genius’ exhibition includes over 250 paintings, sculptures, prints and pieces of furniture and jewellery organised into themes of Femininity and Sensuality, Religion and Mythology and Dreams and Fantasy. It is good to see the attention given to young visitors who can follow orange lobsters and snigger at rude bits on some of Dali’s work. However, something is missing from the exhibition. I hate to use the term, but it's the wow-factor. If you have been to a Dali museum and stood underneath a wall size Dali canvas you will know what I mean – this exhibition contains just one large, but rather dismall oil painting created for the film ‘Spellbound’ (the dream scene with the big scissors). Overall, a little disappointing.

Not as disappointing as ‘Van Gogh Alive’ which features images of Van Gogh paintings projected on large walls in a dark room with classical music. Hmmm.

A third exhibition, ‘Shipwrecked – Tang Treasures and Monsoon Winds’ caught our attention. The wreck of a ninth-century Arabian ship was discovered off Belitung Island in 1998 with over 60,000 pieces of Chinese pottery, ceramics, jewellery and other treasures. A reconstruction of the dhow, which was built in Qantab Oman, sailed from Muscat to Singapore last year. I remember reading an article when the 'Jewel of Muscat' left Sultan Qaboos port in February 2010 but I don’t recall any exhibitions in Muscat. The dhow will be on display in a new museum in Singapore later this year.

That was the 'art' part of the ArtScience Museum. The 'museum' part of the ArtScience Museum was closed off.