OCTOBER – DECEMBER 2012
PARISIAN SPLENDOUR AN INSIDER’S EYE ON THE FRENCH CAPITAL
WHY DESSERTS ARE THE ULTIMATE SWEET SURRENDER BIG BANG – EXPLOSIVE FACTS ON FIREWORKS
NEW MUSEUMS JUMP OFF
Modern Culture Forget dusty museums and deathly quiet art galleries, today’s exhibition and installation spaces now offer visitors a whole new level of excitement, as EUNICE LEW reports
WHETHER HISTORY, ART OR SCIENCE, MUSEUMS HAVE ALWAYS been the starting point for a cultural taste of a foreign city. With many modern travellers shunning the old for something new and exciting, cultural attractions across the board have had to rethink the way they engage today’s visitors. The resulting institutions and updated mainstays have transformed stuffy, fusty vaults of knowledge into hubs of interactive and engaging exhibits. Billed as the largest museum in the Southern Hemisphere, Australia’s Melbourne Museum keeps visitor rankings high by regularly unveiling a new exhibit or artefact. The museum also has several educational-yet-fun permanent features, including Dynamic Earth, Dinosaur Walk and The Human Body. Additionally, the on-site Immersion Cinema Experience theatre, which is a trailblazer for the interactive museum experience, allows visitors to interact with a film via a touch screen to influence the storyline, creating their own outer space, or underwater adventure.
IMAGES: JOHANNES–MARIA SCHLORKE (MAIN); DIANNA SHAPE (DINOSAUR)
WITH MANY TRAVELLERS SHUNNING THE OLD, CULTURAL ATTRACTIONS HAVE HAD TO RETHINK THE WAY THEY ENGAGE TODAY’S VISITORS
Opposite: The “Giants of the Sea” hall in the Ozeaneum in Germany Left: Always wanted to be a pirate? Check out the Maritime Experiential Museum in Singapore, so you can wow your friends with your historically accurate impression! You can even take a stroll through the Souk Gallery, a recreation of port markets of yesteryear (page 1) Below: Melbourne Museum’s Dinosaur Walk is one of their perennial exhibits, so you can see it throughout the year Bottom: Get a peek into the mind of a great architect at the Gaudí Experiència
Open water swimming (above) is the hardest part of the triathlon, which is why duathletes opt for biking (opposite) and running (far right)
Always a leader with high-tech innovation, Singapore boasts the Maritime Experiential Museum — a step up from the now-standard 3D experience. A 150-seater 4D Typhoon Theatre immerses visitors in a 360-degree experience aboard a ninth-century cargo-laden Chinese junk. While headed towards Arabia, “sailors” are caught in a dramatic storm that pits the vessel against high winds and crashing waves. The sea eventually triumphs and 24 AS COTT LIVING
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NEW MUSEUMS JUMP OFF
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UP AND COMING
Samaranch Memorial Museum Tianjin, China Opening 2013 This green-roofed Olympics-themed museum is dedicated to the former International Olympic Committee chairman Juan Antonio Samaranch, and will feature exhibits detailing Olympic influence on China.
Design Museum
London, United Kingdom Opening late 2014 Relocating to the former Commonwealth Institute in Kensington, the new Design Museum will boast three times more space to showcase architectural and industrial design. www.designmuseum.org
Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum
Singapore Opening 2014 The island city’s first natural history museum will house nearly 800,000 Southeast Asian specimens and the fossils of three dinosaurs over 7,500 square metres of space.
From top: Gaudí Experiència’s eclectic exhibits; if you’re a fan of the Beatles, the Museum of Liverpool beckons; the Museum of Ocean and Surf in France manages to make learning fun (below and opposite)
Shanghai Museum of Glass, which opened its doors last year, quickly became a mustvisit attraction. Dedicated to the history of glassmaking, this success story is fittingly housed in a former glass factory, where LED lighting illuminates artefacts and reflects off glossy black interiors to create a gleaming alternate dimension. Among the newcomers in cultural circles are some museums that up the ante with state-of-the-art architecture and interiors, which are often symbols of the venue’s purpose — and fascinating in their own right. For example, the German Oceanographic Museum in Stralsund, north of Berlin, opened the Ozeaneum to much fanfare in 2008. Its open spaces allow natural light to flood exhibits containing over 7,000 organisms. The “Giants of the Seas” hall, with life-sized and lifelike replicas of whales,
fish and a giant squid, is just one of the Ozeaneum’s permanent exhibits, while another, “Exploration and Utilisation of the Seas”, features a virtual diving tour. Of note, the museum uses its own scientific research and marine exploration to support exhibits,
PERHAPS IT IS TIME TO SHED THE NOTION OF DULL MUSEUMS SERVING AS A DEPOSITORY FOR ANCIENT CURIOS, VISITED ONLY BY BOOKISH TYPES IMAGES: REUTERS (PICASSO’S PAINTING)
pulls the ship deep into Davy Jones’s locker, where viewers are given a closer view of the shipwreck. History museums need not be tombs for stories and decaying artefacts, as the upcoming Historium Brugge, in Belgium, will prove. Due to open by the end of this year, it is a far cry from the traditional chronological catalogue of often-drab daily life. Instead, it assaults the senses by transporting visitors back to the Middle Ages to see, hear, taste, feel and smell medieval Belgium. Accompany a young man named Jacob, as he searches for his lady-love at the bustling harbour, wanders around Flemish painter Jan van Eyck’s studio, sniffs the fragrances of a bathhouse and revels in the gentle kiss of snowflakes. Art and architecture are two areas of cultural exploration that draw much attention. In Barcelona, Spain, the Gaudí Experiència is dedicated to the legacy of illustrious Catalan Art-Nouveau architect Antoni Gaudí, who contributed no less than seven properties in and around the city — including the famed Sagrada Família cathedral — that have all been designated UNESCO World Heritage sites. The complex boasts interactive touch screen walls, which tell visitors about Gaudí’s life and works, as well as a 4D documentary that details his inspirations while constructing his houses. To keep up with young pretenders, the more traditional National Maritime Museum of London launched a permanent “Voyagers” gallery, with the main draw being a 20-metre-long wave-like structure composed of 26 triangular facets. It serves as a dynamic display for over 300 projected videos and images of Britain’s sea journeys, and is accompanied by a custom-made soundscape. While it is not imperative for museums to include digital technology to reel in visitors, it is a popular formula. The
displaying data creatively and effectively while remaining socially responsible. No wonder then, that it was dubbed European Museum of the Year in 2010. Not to be outdone, the seaside city of Biarritz in France opened the Cité de l’Océan et du Surf museum (Museum of
Ocean and Surf ). Fashioned by architects Steven Holl of New York and Solange Fabião of Brazil to emulate the contours of waves, the structure won the Annual Design Review 2011 award. Visitors can find out what it is like to pilot a submarine, weather an ocean storm onboard a ship, or even — thanks to 3D “pop-out” technology — take a journey in a deep-sea submersible to explore the depths of a hidden undersea chasm. Looking at the eclectic selection of museums that today’s traveller can enjoy, perhaps it is time to shed the notion of dull museums serving as a depository for ancient curios, visited only by bookish types. These institutions are taking a more active stance in wooing visitors by increasing hands-on learning and creating engaging exhibits in beautiful buildings, which all add up to an enjoyable day out.
SHOW PIECES Britain’s Tate Modern houses the world’s second-most expensive painting auctioned: Pablo Picasso’s Nude, Green Leaves and Bust. In 2010, it sold for £65.5 million (US$106.5 million) to a private collector
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