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Book celebrates Neka Art Museum
Mon, 11/17/2008 10:52 AM | Bali
It was his seventh book on the Neka Art Museum, but Garrett Kam felt special because he got to launch it during the three-day East-West Center (EWC) conference in Bali.
"I'm an alumnae of EWC ... and they're the reason I got interested in Asia and Indonesia," Garrett said.
"So I was really happy that many of my colleagues will get to see my work," he said.
The book, titled Neka Art Museum in Modern Balinese History Art and The Passage of Time, was launched in front of hundreds of art enthusiasts and scholars from the EWC conference at the Neka Art Museum in Ubud on Friday.
The book attempts to explain how the museum has been trying to connect delicate commonalities among a plethora of Balinese arts, such as the relationship between Balinese dances and the kris (a traditional Indonesian sword).
"So if you see a painting of a warrior dance from Bali or photograph, he's always wearing a kris and in the book, there's a kris right next to that painting or photograph," he said.
"It's really trying to show that the arts are integrated and related to each other," Garrett said.
Garrett, who was born in Hawaii, became interested in Indonesian arts during his time studying at the East-West Center at the University of Hawaii.
He received his calling after discovering Balinese arts, coming back to the island often enough to receive the Balinese name of I Nyoman Swastawan.
In 1988, during one of his few stops in Bali for the first EWC conference, he met Sutedja Neka, who is one of the island's most successful art dealers and the founder of Neka Art Museum.
Nudged by many of his Indonesian colleagues in the East-West Center, began working together to introduce Balinese arts to the world through overseas exhibitions and publications.
That collaboration would continue until today, with Garrett currently working as the museum's curator.
Under his patronage, the museum's collection grew to collect more than 400 prized paintings by foreign and Indonesian master artists, including Bonnet, Arie Smith, Hofker, Affandi, Hendra Gunawan, Lempad and Sobrat.
When asked why he dedicated so much of his time to the museum, Garrett said he was in awe of the museum's collection, calling it the "most integrated and the most complete" in Bali.
He said the museum's collection made it easier for him to write about Balinese arts and to continue publishing books about it.
"(My book) is not a catalogue, it is actually telling a story," he said.
When asked what his plans were after his latest book, Garrett said he had at least one more project about the museum, although he would not divulge any information about it.
"Besides, I want to give visitors time to look at the museum's collection," he said. "You need more than one visit to see it all." -- JP/Andra Wisnu
