Art(Science) Appreciation

After we finished with the Tang Treasures exhibition, Noey and I also spent some time checking out the other visiting exhibitions in the ArtScience Museum since the entrance fee gives you admission to all galleries.

While I had made the trip to view the Tang treasures, the exhibition that I was most interested in was in fact the Van Gogh Alive exhibition.

I love Van Gogh’s works for their vibrant colours, strong images and the artist’s distinctive and instantly recognisable style. I have been fortunate enough to see actual Van Goghs in museums in Europe and the US while on holiday and have been awestruck each time. Van Gogh Alive however, is not the typical display of art works you will find in regular art museums. Instead, what this is is a projection of images from Van Gogh’s masterpieces on huge screens, walls, columns and even the floor such that you are able to walk through his work, so to speak.

When a friend first told me that it was merely a projection of images on walls and not real Van Goghs that were on display, it sounded really lame. Having been there, I can say that it was not that bad. It was interesting at least! With the walls being canvases, the huge scale and the detail of the HD images projected was actually pretty impressive. The images were changed in a sequence to music which set the mood for the exhibition. With the many different surfaces, they were able to project details of the paintings beside a more “zoomed-out” version of the same painting. I also liked how when they projected a painting of a portrait, they also projected an image of a photograph of the actual person beside it so you could compare the two.

This exhibition is best appreciated if you have the time to sit down and be fully immersed in the experience. I very much wanted to sit on the floor and watch the whole sequence of images, but unfortuantely, sitting still is not something Noey does. At all. He raced through the gallery, ignoring my efforts to try to get him to pause to look at the images. When he announced that he needed to pee again for the second time within 10 minutes, I decided to give up on this and bring him to see Dali upstairs instead.

Dali, I knew Noey would like. For one, he loves statues and sculptures. For another, he’s very fond of the Dali sculpture at the bottom of UOB Plaza. He always asks to see it every time we are in Raffles Place after dropping DD off at the office. “Big man!” (in reference to the statue) was one of the first phrases he knew when he started speaking.

I’m not into Dali but I think this exhibition was probably the best of the lot. Noey certainly enjoyed it. When I got hungry after a while, I had to tear him away from the exhibits. All in all, we had a good trip. Noey is still telling everyone that he went to the Dali exhibition and he saw the Space Elephant and the “Glorious Sun”. (It is a small gold sculpture with, as Noey describes it “lots of pokey things sticking out”.)

We had to leave the museum for lunch because the cafe didn’t really seem like a viable food option. I was quite disappointed that they didn’t allow re-entry on the same day after exiting. If that was the case, they should really ramp up their food options so that museum goers can lunch before taking in more exhibits. We headed for the Food Court in MBS because I thought that the skating rink would be a good distraction for Noey. It was, but I encountered price shock when I had to pay $6.50 for a very average bowl of fishball noodles with only 3 measly fishballs for Noey. Ugh.

Some tips if you consider going:

1) Eat first, so that you won’t have to go in search of more than a light snack.
2) Bring an OCBC credit card. It gives you 20% off the entrance fees.
3) Remember to claim the free parking if you drive! There is complimentary parking if you spend $20 or more, and this includes the entrance fees. It saved me $12 in parking charges.
4) Check out the activities page to get more out of your visit. There are some kid-friendly activities, but unfortunately these didn’t coincide with the time I had planned to visit the museum.
5) There are quite a few interesting books and an interactive display outside the gift shop that you might like to make some time for. They kept Noey entertained for quite a while and I wish we had more time for it.