2025-04-03
Jakarta's first contemporary art museum will open in November 2017. MACAN, or Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara, will open its doors in March.
Also in March, a series of free performances by foreign and Indonesian artists will then take place. This action is designed to whet the appetite of art lovers for what is to come in November. It will be accompanied by (also free) workshops held in local schools. The museum's director, Thomas Berghuis, places particular emphasis on the educational aspect of the institution, especially in the field of art history.
The curators engaged by the museum, Charles Esche and Agung Hujatnik, will present works from the private collection of the institution's founder, Haryanto Adikoesoemo. Adikoesoemo is a philanthropist who has amassed more than 800 works of art, both international and Indonesian, over the past quarter of a century. The museum will feature works by international artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Ed Ruscha, Andy Warhol, and Anish Kapoor, and Indonesian artists such as Raden Saleh and Affandi. The exhibition aims to present Indonesian work and place it in the context of art by Japanese or Chinese artists, as well as European and American artists.