Museum MACAN Opens in Jakarta

Museum MACAN opened on 4 November 2017 in Jakarta. Its full name is the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara, the old name for the Indonesian archipelago, and the acronym means tiger in Indonesian. It is the first museum in the country to show modern and contemporary art, both Indonesian and international, in a building of international standard.

The collection

The museum was founded by Haryanto Adikoesoemo, the head of a chemicals and logistics company, who had been collecting for more than twenty years. His collection of about 800 works had never been shown in public. It has two strengths. The first is Indonesian art from the 19th century onwards: Raden Saleh, the painters of the independence period such as Sudjojono and Affandi, and the contemporary artists who have made Yogyakarta and Bandung important centres. The second is post-war art from America, Europe and Asia.

The opening exhibition, “Art Turns. World Turns”, showed 90 works by 70 artists and set the two side by side. Works by Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Gerhard Richter and Jeff Koons hung with those of FX Harsono, Heri Dono and Arahmaiani. An Infinity Mirrored Room by Yayoi Kusama, which the museum owns, drew queues from the first day.

The building

The museum occupies about 4,000 square metres on the fifth floor of AKR Tower, in Kebon Jeruk, in the west of the city, with galleries designed by MET Studio of London. There is a children’s art space with a commissioned installation that changes each year, a sculpture terrace, a café and a shop. The first director was Aaron Seeto, formerly of the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane, where he had worked on the Asia Pacific Triennial.

Why it mattered

Indonesia is the largest country in Southeast Asia and has one of its liveliest art scenes, with strong collectors, artist-run spaces and a biennale tradition. What it lacked was public institutions. State museums were underfunded, and anyone wishing to see Indonesian modern art had to visit private houses or travel to Singapore, where the National Gallery had opened two years earlier. Museum MACAN, privately funded and professionally run, with climate control, education programmes and loans from abroad, filled that gap.

In its first years it presented the largest Kusama exhibition yet seen in Southeast Asia and solo shows of Indonesian and regional artists, and its attendance, much of it young, exceeded expectations.

Visiting

Kebon Jeruk is 30 to 60 minutes from the central hotels, depending on Jakarta’s traffic; go on a weekday morning. The museum is closed on Mondays, and timed tickets are sold online. Raffles Jakarta, which stands beside its own art centre devoted to the painter Hendra Gunawan, is the natural base for a visit built around art.