My Escapes Singapore Bustling, Colourful Singapore Visiting the ArtScience Museum

Visiting the ArtScience Museum

I was lucky to be able to visit the ArtSciene Museum in its first year of existence.
Strangely, the museum is not only the lotus flower-shaped building - there's a lot more of it is under the ground! The lotus is just the "tip of the iceberg"...

This museum was opened on February 17th, 2011 and I dropped in on June 19th that same year to thoroughly examine it.

It was designed by Moshe Safdie, a Canadian-Israeli architect and it resembles a white lotus flower.

Some of the "petals" are missing, which makes the building asymmetrical. Naturally, this adds dynamism to it.

See the photo below for another angle...

Well, it hosts a permanent exhibition, but most of the time it it hosts touring exhibitions. And I was very lucky at the time of my visit... read below to find out what I saw!

Before getting into details, let me also tell you that this was the first museum of its kind at the time of its launch. (It combines art with science yet, I felt a lot more art in there and barely a bit of science).

I fell in love with the design of this beautiful building, but visiting its interior was also entertaining.

At the time of my visit, I was able to see Salvador Dalí's artwork, wall projections of Van Gogh's paintings and even a rich collection of sunken treasures collected from an ancient ship that had sunk off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia.

This Shipwrecked: Tang Treasures and Monsoon Winds-entitled exhibition.

To be honest, the lost treasure collection thrilled me and I spent a lot more time with the ancient artifacts, including lots of gold objects, silver bars, but also Chinese ceramics...

The treasures exposed belonged to the Belitung shipwreck, also known as the Tang shipwreck or, Batu Hitam shipwreck.

The ancient ship had sunk in 830 AD! This is a very ancient shipreck and so are the treasures as well!

Amazingly, the sunken ship was actually an Arabian dhow, which probably sailed betwen China and either Arab countries or East African lands.

The ship was found 1.6 km (1 mi) away from the Belitung Island, which is found south of Singapore, northeast of Sumatra.

It was a rather small ship by today's standards, having a length of roughly 18 m (58 ft).

I was stunned after having found out about the intense trade that was going on between these parts of Southeast Asia and the Arabian countries, as well as East Asia.

For further documentation, photos about the Belitung shipwreck, I recommend the following resources (from the same site, actually): Shipwrecked - Tang Treasures and Monsoon Wings with an exhibition catalogue (PDF available).

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