Singapore's Newest Attraction: The ArtScience Museum

Photo: Flickr/Schristia

Already a global financial center, Singapore is now taking steps to become even more cosmopolitan with its new ArtScience Museum, just opened at the multi-billion dollar Marina Bay Sands resort. Designed by renowned architect Moshe Safdie, the ArtScience Museum examines the link between—you guessed it—art and science, reflecting Singapore's desire to become a more important cultural capital.

In fact, we've heard some gossip that the museum was initially slated to be an Asian Guggenheim of sorts, but plans crumbled when the New York art institute demanded a steep price for rights to its name—and that was before they even started talking about the art.

Instead, Marina Bay Sands decided to open the ArtScience Museum, and it settled on another nickname: "The Welcoming Hand of Singapore." The title pays tribute to the museum's edifice, whose round center supports 10 finger-like structures, the tallest about 60 meters high. The hand-inspired nickname also seems fitting for a space set to explore the connection between two fields that come alive in the laboratory and the studio, where hand meets mind. "We looked at the lowest common denominator between art and science, asking ourselves what they have in common," Museum Director Tom Zaller told us. "We kept coming back to one word, and that word was inspiration."

The museum's showcase exhibit, "ArtScience: A Journey through Creativity," examines the creative process in three stages. To begin, visitors ascend a "floating staircase" and view a series of translucent scrolls, each featuring questions that motivated great innovators of the past. In a second gallery, representations of inventions like Leonardo da Vinci's flying machine, a Kongming lantern, and a high-tech robotic fish suspend from the ceiling, while a multimedia presentation of lights, sound, and kinetic images are a feast for the senses in the third gallery.

Museum guests can even design their own projects at interactive kiosks, creating a virtual postcard and then sharing it with friends online or viewing a projection of it on one of the gallery walls.

Situated along the Marina Bay waterfront, the museum building itself is a draw. The roof has a large hole that allows rainwater to fall through the center atrium like a waterfall, dropping 35 meters to a pool on the lowest level. For sustainability, the rainwater channels back through a water feature to create a continuous waterfall cycle, though the museum also recycles some of it for use in its bathrooms (part of Singapore's Green Mark program). And for some natural sunlight, the "fingertips" of the Welcoming Hand feature skylights to illuminate the curved interior. "The building combines the aesthetic and functional, the visual and technological, and for me, really represents the forward-looking spirit of Singapore," Safdie wrote in an e-mail.

Indeed, Marina Bay Sands seems optimistic about the museum's future potential. The resort's website says it will serve as "the spiritual home of the burgeoning ArtScience movement," though Zaller clarified: "I don't know that it's yet a movement," he said. "Maybe it will be some day." Between its floating staircase, cyclical waterfall and robotic fish, the museum is sure to spark some conversation, and maybe even a bit of inspiration.