On the Road : Bangkok Art and Culture Centre

Opened in July 2008, an article from C Arts Magazine describes Bangkok's first public art space:

The new visual art space is Bangkok's first large international-standard public art museum. Located in one of the city's busiest commercial districts known as Siam Square, BACC is effectively integrated into a cluster of up-market shopping malls (including Siam Discovery and Paragon), all connected by the National Stadium BTS skytrain station. Designed by Bangkok architectural firm Robert Boughey & Associates, the new Centre is housed in a twelve-floor atrium-style edifice.

...

Whereas Western art institutions of the 1950s still adhered to a purist vision of art - the museum functioning exclusively as a temple of high culture - public state-sponsored visual art spaces built nowadays in Southeast Asia pursue an altogether different agenda. In order to survive financially and secure a steady stream of visitors, they often operate simultaneously as meeting place, cultural venue and retail destination. Thus BACC, with its mall-land location, shopping centre architecture, underground multi-storey car park, and several dozen food and commercial outlets occupying the building's lower and more accessible floors (still untenanted at the time of writing), epitomizes Southeast Asia's current taste for hybrid, entertainment-oriented public spaces.

outside

inside

Mask 2 (detail), Oil on Aluminum, by Therdkiat Wangwatcharakul

coffee shop

ice cream shop

frame shop

Bangkok Art and Culture Center
Address: 939 Rama 1 Road, Wangmai, Pathumwan, Bangkok 10330
Telephone: +66 02 214 6630-1
Fax: +66 02 214 6632
E-mail: bkkart@yahoo.com
www.bacc.or.th

Read full article from C Art : Contemporary Asian Art and Culture >>