Although it has a permanent exhibition, ArtScience Gallery, the ArtScience Museum mainly hosts touring exhibitions curated by other museums. As the name suggests, ArtScience Museum at Marina Bay Sands beautifully fuses art and science to tell fascinating stories. This premier venue houses a constantly changing line-up of major international touring exhibitions, brought in through collaborations with organisations such as the American Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian Institute and world-renowned furniture designer Herman Miller.
The ArtScience Museum has housed renowned exhibitions that push the boundaries of science, technology and knowledge. “The Deep”, an exhibition on deep-sea life, saw the largest collection of abyssal creatures ever displayed in Southeast Asia, and “The Nobel Prize: Ideas Changing the World” showcased how Nobel Prize-awarded efforts have shaped and continue to change our world. Other exhibitions at the ArtScience Museum have also featured a multitude of works from the Arts and creative fields – from multi-media art pieces by Eric Valli that reflect life along the Yangtze River, to an insight into the art of animation with DreamWorks Animation: The Exhibition.
The museum is also home to permanent exhibition, Future World: Where Art Meets Science, where visitors can immerse themselves in a dynamic 1,500-square-metre digital universe of interactive art installations revolving around the themes of Nature, Town, Park and Science. Not only does the museum push boundaries with its retinue of world-class exhibitions, its design architecture is equally as iconic. The museum’s structure is meant to symbolise the welcoming hand of Singapore with 10 fingers. The tip of each “finger” filters in natural light to showcase exhibits in the best light. The architecture is said to be a form reminiscent of a lotus flower. It is designed by the architect Moshe Safdie. Referred to as "The Welcoming Hand of Singapore" by Las Vegas Sands chairman Sheldon Adelson, the ArtScience Museum is anchored by a round base in the middle, with ten extensions referred to as "fingers".
The design concept for each finger denotes various gallery spaces sporting skylights at the "fingertips" which are included as sustainable illumination for the curved interior walls. The ArtScience Museum has 21 gallery spaces with a total area of 50,000 square feet (6,000 square meters). Rainwater is harvested and channelled down the centre of the building, flowing through its bowl-shaped roof into a reflecting pond at the lowest level of the building. The rainwater is then recycled for use in the building's restrooms. The permanent exhibition, the ArtScience Gallery, consists of three galleries - Curiosity, Inspiration, Expression.
The ArtScience Museum promises to feature 21 gallery spaces equating to 50,000 square feet (6,000 square meters) which will display exhibits from combined art/science, media/technology, as well as design/architecture motifs. Featuring 21 gallery spaces, the boldly iconic lotus-inspired ArtScience Museum hosts blockbuster international exhibits as well as permanent exhibits on three floors of gallery space across 6,000 square meters. Since it opened it 2011, ArtScience Museum has been home to some of the most renowned exhibitions including: Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition, Andy Warhol: 15 Minutes Eternal, Harry Potter: The Exhibition™, Dinosaurs: Dawn to Extinction, Da Vinci: Shaping the Future, The Deep, DreamWorks Animation: The Exhibition, Singapore Stories: Then, Now, Tomorrow and Collider. Permanent exhibits include objects indicative of the accomplishments of both the arts and the sciences through the ages, along the lines of Leonardo da Vinci's Flying Machine, a Kongming Lantern, and a high-tech robotic fish.
The museum opened with an exhibition of a collection of the Belitung shipwreck cargo, and Tang dynasty treasures that were discovered and carefully preserved by Tilman Walterfang of Seabed Explorations NZ Ltd. Tilman Walterfang and his team found the Tang dynasty artifacts in the Gaspar Strait in 1998 among the wreck of the Belitung shipwreck, a large 9th-century Arabian dhow wrecked around 830 AD. For the next six years, they were desalinated, conserved and researched by his company Seabed Explorations Ltd in New Zealand. They were eventually purchased for around 32 million USD.
An accurate reproduction of the Arab dhow ship, named The Jewel of Muscat, was recently presented by the Sultanate of Oman to the government and people of Singapore. The exhibition will include sufficient items to ensure that the collection on tour will reflect accurately the assortment and magnitude of the find and its global inter-cultural significance, as this is the single largest consignment of Tang Dynasty export goods ever discovered. The find includes some of the oldest cobalt-blue-and-white ceramics made in China, several gold items made with Arabic designs and swastikas, jars filled with spices and incense resins, bronze mirrors, thousands of glazed bowls, ewers and other fine ceramics, as well as lead ingots.
The pièce de résistance of the exhibition is a small cache of magnificent, intricately tooled vessels of silver and gold, which remain unparalleled in quality and design from the period. With support from the estate of Tan Sri Khoo Teck Puat, the cargo of the Arab dhow, which was used as the true and original model, now generally referred to among academic circles as the "Tang Shipwreck Treasure: Singapore's Maritime Collection".
10 Bayfront Avenue, Singapore
+65 6688 8888
10.00 - 19.00 last visitor 18.00
www.marinabaysands.com/museum
