Treasures of Bali

People visit the island of Bali for a variety of reasons and the basic of course being to chill out and relax, and enjoy time away from the rat race of their lives back in their home country.

Some just go to Bali for the party and nightclub scene and get obliterated in an alcohol fuelled binge and seek out less virtuous ladies for company. Others just like to chill out on the beach and nurture their suntan to a crispy dark chocolate colour so they can return home and give their GP the shits by showing them all the lovely cancer spots they so graciously obtained. Then there are the shop hoppers - those people bent on buying just about everything in sight and paying the least price possible leaving the poor vendor thinking whether it was karma that just swept through his life or if he kicked a dead cat somewhere in an earlier life.

Then there are those people who visit Bali to experience the culture and integrate with the people as much as possible. They visit the temples and attend expensive dance performance lunches or dinners, seek out all that sniffs of culture including old markets, sacred places of interest and museums.

Just mentioning museums, there was a fantastic article in the JP yesterday about a fabulous new book surely to appeal to all visitors to the island. The book, entitled Treasures of Bali; A Guide to Museums in Bali, has just been released onto the market. Here is the article for your perusal:

Museum guidebook leads tour of troves
Ni Wayan Murni, Contributor, Ubud

I witnessed this book's strange birth. The quintessentially English publisher Richard Mann of Gateway Books stayed at my Villas a couple of years ago researching and writing Bali Off the Beaten Track.

He came up to me at breakfast one morning and said, "Murni, I've woken up with the idea of writing the first ever guidebook to all the museums of Bali. It's never been done before."

Shortly afterwards Richard met Nyoman Gunarsa, probably Bali's most famous living artist who is also chairman of the Bali Museums Association. That evening Richard caught up with me in my restaurant and reported his evident excitement: "Murni do you remember my museums guidebook idea? You won't believe it but Nyoman Gunarsa supports it and wants me to publish it."

It was a curious coincidence that both men from opposite sides of the world had the same wish at the same time.
That was a year ago. It has been a lot of work but the book has now appeared as Treasures of Bali: A Guide to Museums in Bali, and it is glorious.

There are 21 museums in Bali; some are private like the most popular one, the Neka Art Museum in Ubud, which is encyclopedic in its range of paintings, and others are government-run like the little-known Museum Gedong Kirtya in Singaraja which houses a collection of 6,753 traditional lontar palm leaf manuscripts.

The museums are located all over the island although most are concentrated in the Ubud area - which is not surprising as Ubud is the cultural heart of Bali. The major museums have a coverage of 12 pages each in the book and the smaller ones have one page each.

I am not aware of any guidebook that even mentions the wide range of museums that exist here on Bali, so Treasures of Bali is a great contribution.

There is a helpful list of details for each one: address, telephone and fax, email, website, opening hours, facilities and how to get there. A floor plan is provided for every featured museum and there are useful maps at the end of the book showing how to find them.

On the cover is a beautiful painting from the Kerta Gosa Museum.

Richard has visited all of the museums several times and has composed a narrative describing their collections. Numerous stunning color photographs illustrate examples from the collections. In some cases there are interviews with the museum owners that outline their various philosophies, perspectives and aims.

Of course most - if not all - of the museums featured in Treasures of Bali do not sell their artwork.
With your appetites whetted by all this beauty and perhaps wanting to own a piece of Balinese culture yourself, it is great that the book also contains details and descriptions of Bali's leading galleries that sell antiques, paintings, textiles, sculptures, masks and other treasures.

I am also very proud that the book features my own shop in Ubud among them.

The reviewer is the owner of Murni's Warung, Murni's Warung Shop, Murni's Villas and Murni's Houses in Ubud, Bali. She has been a consultant on an upcoming title, Secrets of Bali, and can be contacted at murni@murnis.com.