Art lover Agung Rai passes on his artistic passion to kids

Text and photos by Mulkan Salmona

UBUD, Bali (JP): For many art lovers, Ubud is their first destination when visiting Bali.

Once renowned as the center of the Balinese Renaissance of the arts in the late l920s and l930s, the small and tranquil village of Ubud in Gianyar regency has been transformed as a classy and unique art center, where many local and international artists, writers and scholars live.

Visitors to Ubud will see lines of art shops selling a wide range of paintings, sculptures, carvings, antique bric-a-brac, woven textiles and other fine art works.

The art village is also home to many important museums and art galleries such as Puri Lukisan Museum, Neka Museum, Rudana Museum and Agung Rai Museum.

Art activities have been flourishing in Ubud when a local aristocrat Cokorda Sukawati established in the early 1930s the Pita Maha art community with Western artists who included Dutch painter Rudolf Bonnet and German painter Walter Spies.

Many of the Pita Maha artists' works, such as I Gusti Nyoman Lempad's, are collected by museums around the world.

In Ubud, some museums, including the Agung Rai museum, collect and preserve works of famous Pita Maha artists and, of course, works of their contemporaries.

In addition to preserving fabulous art works, the Agung Rai has other important aims.

The museum owner, Agung, said his main objective was to preserve precious Balinese art forms and to introduce them to young people.

"I feel responsible to increase people's awareness on the importance of arts and to encourage children to become involved in art activities," said Agung.

Agung said he believed that children would love and appreciate art works if they were introduced and had wide access to the art world from childhood.

When we visited the Agung Rai museum, dozens of children were seen practicing traditional Balinese dances accompanied by a gamelan orchestra in a corner of the museum building.

Under a shady tree, some kids seriously worked on landscape paintings on their canvases.

"These children are allowed to take part in various art activities here for free," Agung explained.

He said children could easily acquire useful art skills and absorb different forms of knowledge if they learned these forms naturally.

At the museum, children are free to explore and to appreciate paintings and other art works by prominent artists such as Raden Saleh, S. Sudjojono, Jeihan, Nyoman Gunarsa and Arie Smit.

The museum also houses rare works by Walter Spies and several Balinese paintings from the 1930s.

Children are also taught to love nature and the environment.

The museum, which is on a four-hectare site, was constructed with attention to traditional Balinese architectural styles. The building is surrounded by a beautiful landscape of paddy fields, and a river where rural villagers, and local and foreign artists mingle.

Established in June l996, the museum currently houses numerous classic, modern and contemporary paintings, sculptures and a vast range of art works.

The entrance fee for the museum is Rp 10,000 (US$1.40).

"The money is inadequate to operate and to take care of art works in the museum, which takes about Rp 45 million ($6,500) per month," said Agung.

To support his artistic activities, Agung runs a number of galleries, a hotel, cafes and several entertainment places to showcase a large variety of traditional performing arts.

"I never thought of building this museum only to attract domestic and foreign tourists or to generate a lot of money," he said.