Places of Interest - MUSEUMS

Ubud is arguably the best place to use as a base if you're visiting Bali; if you're looking for culture, comfort, nature and inspiration. Ubud is surrounded by most of the things that bring people to Bali -- scenic rice fields, small villages, art and craft communities, ancient temples, palaces, rivers, museum and traditional market. Some 25 kilometres from Denpasar and its central location makes it easy to get from Ubud to the mountains, beaches, and major towns.

The centre of Balinese painting, Ubud's Museum "Puri Lukisan" has a permanent collection of modern works of Balinese art dating from the turn of the century. There are also several art galleries and homes of famous artists here, including that of Dutch born Hans Snel and Spanish Antonio Blanco. The "Young artist" style now popular in Balinese painting was introduced by the Dutch painter Arie Smith. In the past, other foreign painters inspired Balinese artists to adopt western techniques but traditional Balinese paintings are still made and sold another museum called "Neka Museum" has a wide collection of paintings both by Indonesian as well as foreign artists who used to live in Bali.

1. Museum Agung Rai (ARMA)
The AGUNG RAI MUSEUM OF ART (ARMA) was officially opened by the Indonesian Minister for Education and Culture, Prof. Dr. Ing. Wardiman Djojonegoro on 9 June 1996. The museum is administered by the ARMA Foundation which was set up on 13 May 1996.

The ARMA unveils the manifestation of Agung Rai's vision. A new concept of museum shaped in the setting of a cultural establishment, comprising a range of edifices sprawled over four hectares of beautifully landscaped grounds. ARMA provides a bountiful focal-point for visual and performing arts. Visitors will enjoy and marvel at the painting exhibits placed either permanently or alternately substituted.

ARMA is more than a museum. It is a centre for visual and performing arts, and provides opportunities for the visitor to enjoy the permanent collection of paintings, special temporary exhibitions, theatre performances, dance, music, and painting classes, bookshop, library and reading room, cultural workshops, seminars and training programmes.

2. Museum Rudana, Teges
The museum focuses on an overview of Balinese painting, from Kamasan-style traditional calendars through Batuan-style and Ubud style pictures to contemporary work.

3. Museum Puri Lukisan
Set in attractive gardens, complete with lotus-filled ponds and shady arbours, Puri Lukisan ("Palace of Paintings") was founded in 1956 by the Ubud punggawa Cokorda Gede Agung Sukawati (whose descendants are still involved with the museum) and the Dutch artist Rudolf Bonnet. Both men had amassed a significant collection of work by local artists through their involvement with the Pita Maha group and almost the whole of the first pavilion located at the top of the garden, is still given over to these works (identifiable by the words" donated by Rudolf Bonnet" on the label). Some of these are wayang-style canvases, but most are early Ubud style, depicting local scenes, with great attention paid to the foliage, the temple carvings and the villager's attire. There are also plenty of works that don't fit into the recognized Balinese "schools" including a good selection of distinctive ink drawings by the multi-talented I Gusti Nyoman Lempad.

4. Museum Neka
The museum was founded in 1982 by the collector and art patron, Wayan Suteja Neka, a former teacher and son of the award-winning woodcarver I Wayan Neka, who was a member of the influential 1930s art movement, Pita Maha. In establishing this private collection, Suteja Neka's stated intention was" to document the history of paintings inspired by the Balinese environment" a brief which neatly encompasses traditional works as well as those by expatriate and visiting artists. Highly informative English language labels are posted alongside every one of the museum's several hundred paintings, make the confusing official gallery guidebook redundant, Nevertheless, you might consider splashing out on one of the more recent and better written books on the Neka collection: both perceptions of paradise: images of Bali in the Art by Garrett Kam, and the Development of painting in Bali selection from the Neka Art Museum by Suteja Neka and Garrett Kam.

5. Museum Agung Rai (Arma)
It's the brain child of the same collector who runs the impressive commercial gallery on Jalan Peliatan and has as an excellent, public-access library and research centre on the premises, as well as a small bookshop and an open-air dance stage.
Arma founder Anak Agung Gede Rai and his wife Agung Rai Suartini.

6. Museum Blanco
Blanco, who died in1999 at the age of 88, specialized in erotic paintings and drawings, particularly portraits portrait of Balinese women in varying states of undress and abandon. As with countless other western male artists before and since Blanco fell for a local girl, Ni Ronji, soon after arriving in Ubud in 1952,Blanco singling her out as his top model and later marrying her. Aside from his erotica, Blanco's collection also included lots of his multi media pieces, many of them surreal flights of poetic fancy, humorous and bizarre musing presented with mischievous ebullience. Blanco also created frames for all his works, most of them made from unorthodox material. What ever you think of the man's artistic achievement, it's hard not to enjoy the sheer panache of this ultimate self -publicist and his undeniable camp museum, complete with sidled pillars and sweeping Spanish balustrades.


Ubud's Places of Interest: Palaces | Traditional Market | Museums