Thailand is preparing to make history with the upcoming opening of its first museum dedicated to international contemporary art. Dib Bangkok, featuring sleek minimalist architecture, will open its doors on December 21 in the country's capital, becoming one of the largest art spaces in the nation. The museum's founder, architect, and director revealed details about the groundbreaking institution at Paris's Hotel Lutetia during the city's art week.
Located in a renovated former industrial building in the Rama IV-Kluaynamthai district, the museum spans a total of 16,000 square meters with nearly 7,000 square meters of exhibition space distributed across three floors. This exhibition area is roughly equivalent to that of the new Cartier Foundation in Paris. The museum was founded by musician and real estate entrepreneur Purat "Chang" Osathanugrah to house the collection of his father, Petch Osathanugrah, former CEO of beverage production company Osotspa, singer, and eclectic Thai art collector.
Petch Osathanugrah, who passed away in 2023, had amassed more than a thousand artworks created mostly between the 1990s and 2020 by 200 Thai and international artists. The collection includes works by notable artists such as Montien Boonma, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Kawita Vatanajyankur, Pablo Picasso, Anselm Kiefer, Damien Hirst, Frank Stella, Lee Bul, and Takashi Murakami. "Every great city deserves a great museum," explains Chang Osathanugrah. "The idea is to introduce younger people and new audiences to contemporary art, to create an intergenerational and intercultural dialogue. In the heart of Bangkok's hustle and bustle, with its traffic and tuk-tuks, this museum has been conceived as a serene oasis, a haven of peace where one can slow down."
To showcase this remarkable collection, a contemporary architectural setting was essential. Thai architect and designer Kulapat Yantrasast, based in Los Angeles after studying in Japan, transformed a 1980s steel warehouse into a space featuring minimalist and meditative architecture inspired by both Buddhism and industrial aesthetics. "I didn't want to design a building but a living place. Even the underground parking has been designed to be transformed into a concert hall. Everything is multidisciplinary and modular," he explains.
Visitors will first be welcomed by a large reflecting pool that mirrors the architecture and a living wall still in the process of growing. They can then explore the ground floor—a large raw industrial space measuring 80 meters long—and the upper floors, as well as a central courtyard of nearly 1,400 square meters surrounded by a circular opening to the sky, reminiscent of the Chichu Art Museum by Tadao Ando on Japan's Naoshima Island. The museum also features a sculpture garden, a café-restaurant, and a terrace. A highlight is "the Chapel": an immaculate truncated cone-shaped room (evoking a nuclear power plant chimney or ship's funnel) with a skylight and unique acoustic effects, reminiscent of a "Skyspace" by artist James Turrell.
For the inaugural exhibition, 40 international artists from the collection will be featured in a show titled "Invisible Presence," curated by the museum's director, Japanese art historian and curator Miwako Tezuka. Tezuka, a Columbia University graduate and former associate director of the Reversible Destiny Foundation in New York and former associate curator at the Asia Society, also in New York, explains that "dib" means "raw, crude, authentic" in Thai. The exhibition will focus on Thai artist Montien Boonma, feature large polished stone spheres by artist Alicja Kwade installed in the courtyard, a video installation by Thai filmmaker and artist Apichatpong Weerasethakul, as well as works by German artist Rebecca Horn and Americans Alex Katz and Hugh Hayden.
Dib Bangkok presents itself as the first promising emergence of a broader movement in Southeast Asia, where, according to the director, "many other institutions will flourish in the next five years." The museum is located at 111 Soi Sukhumvit 40, Bangkok 10110, and represents a significant milestone for Thailand's contemporary art scene as the country establishes itself as a cultural destination beyond its renowned ancient culture, lush landscapes, and flavorful cuisine.
