15 December Kuala Lumpur
Dark clouds filled the sky, yet no rain fell.
Morning hymn singing rose from the Sunday service at the Catholic church far
below my apartment. In the afternoon I grabbed a taxi north to the huge National
Art Gallery Malaysia (free admission)
https://www.artgallery.gov.my/en/homepage/ which is one of my favorites for
both its special exhibits and the main collection galleries. I started with a
curious show of large fluorescent tapestries called “Kenyalang Circus” by Marcos
Kueh, a Chinese-Malaysian from Borneo living among Europeans in the Netherlands.
The tapestries satirize the way that the diverse cultures of Borneo have been
misunderstood by both Westerners and Peninsula Malaysians.
I enjoyed a
temporary show of small Chinese jade objects, which coincides with the 50th
anniversary of diplomatic relations between Malaysia and China. The more than
100 carvings came from the Prehistoric Period (ca. 5,000-2,000 BCE), Ancient
Period (ca. 1,600 BCE-589 CE), Medieval Period (ca. 618-1368), and Ming and Qing
dynasties (1368-1912).
I swung by the fascinating exhibit about Enrique
de Malacca, a Malay who had been taken captive in 1511 during a Portuguese
conquest of Malacca and later became an assistant to Ferdinand Magellan, who was
in the Portuguese armada. Enrique was baptized in Goa, then brought to Portugal.
After many adventures in Europe, he set sail with Magellan in 1519 on the
Spanish-financed Moluccan Armada that took a new route westbound toward the
Spice Islands via South America. After Magellan’s death in the Philippines in
1521, Enrique gained his freedom and continued with the surviving crew onward to
Malacca, where he become the first person to circumnavigate the world.
NUSA, a big exhibition from the permanent collection, refers to ‘motherland’ or
‘homeland’ of Southeast Asia. The very diverse sculptures and paintings come
largely from Malaysian artists of the late 20th century and into the 21st.
Up on the 2nd floor I took a quick look in the gallery Works on Paper of mostly
watercolors and pencil sketches made by Western and Asian artists of the late
19th and early 20th centuries. The works portray the beauty of nature, life on
sea and land, and tin mining.
Adjacent to the museum, I stepped into the
café SEJIWA Titiwangsa and had a nice mushroom and veggie pasta dish, a
departure from my usual South Indian food this week. Two light rail lines
brought me to KL Sentral, then I had a South Indian snack before walking home.