“The Foreign Ministry is now in the process of examining the case,” said Busadee Santipitaks, Director General of the Department of Information and Foreign Ministry spokesperson. “The ministry has assigned Thai Ambassador to the UK Pisanu Suvanajata to contact SOAS director Baroness Valerie Amos.”

The move came after Thai media this week revealed that SOAS scholar Angela Chiu had accused her school of accepting the one-metre-tall Buddha statue that stands at the entrance to its Brunei Gallery. It was gifted to the SOAS by American alumni Mary and Paul Slawson who reportedly bought it minus documents attesting to its provenance some 30 years ago. On its website, the SOAS describes the statue as “a delightful 13th-century Lopburi Buddha torso of Thai origin”. It has denied any wrongdoing in accepting the sculpture.

Busadee added that Thai embassy officials in London had also met with John Hollingworth, head of Galleries and Exhibitions at SOAS. “He informed them that his team had checked with the International Council of Museums and found that the artefact is not on the ICOMs Red Lists of lost or vulnerable artworks.”

The SOAS is preparing documents and information on the statue for presentation to the Thai Embassy in London.

“The Foreign Ministry will report again to the Culture Ministry’s Fine Art Department if and when we receive more information on this issue,” Busadee said.

As wealthy VIPs filtered into Art Basel’s imposing halls to view some of the most

valuable works in contemporary art, the staff at Frame Art Fair were a kilometre away scrubbing floors.

Frame, which launched in Basel this year, is the newest satellite fair trying to respond to a wealth gap in the art world, with big name galleries getting richer and smaller players increasingly going broke.

Frame’s founder, French businessman Bertrand Scholler, told AFP that the current system that sees gallerists battle for slots at fairs like Art Basel, where participation for a small gallery can cost tens of thousands of dollars, is “killing” art.

“If you are a newcomer, you die,” he told AFP.

He voiced hope that Frame’s model of profit and burden sharing among about a dozen emerging galleries can provide an alternative to Art Basel, which opens its 49th edition to the public on Thursday.

Frame’s home at the humble, two-storey Basel Art Center is in clear contrast to the Swiss city’s Messeplatz, where vast conference halls and luxury hotels have become synonymous with Art Basel’s powerful brand.

Scholler said he respected the work exhibited at Art Basel each year but raised concern that the pressure to notch up multi-million-dollar sales had made the show stale and allergic to new galleries taking risks on provocative artists.

“Our focus is not to collaborate,” with Art Basel, he said. “Our focus is to do it right.”

The ‘struggle’

Even Art Basel, the art world’s most dominant fair, recognises the industry is hurting.

The Art Market Report commissioned by Art Basel and its main corporate sponsor, Swiss bank UBS, noted that while global sales of art and antiques ballooned to $63.7 billion (54 billion euros) last year — a 12-percent increase compared to 2016 — the smaller fish are struggling to survive.

In 2007, five new galleries opened for every closure, but in 2017 that trend had flipped, with gallery closures outnumbering openings for the first time in years, the report said.

The main explanation for closures is that the costs of “maintaining a retail presence in a prominent urban location have become prohibitively high, versus the low and variable volume of sales”, the report added.

“This is a fair that is taking place at a moment when galleries are speaking openly, more openly than ever, about the struggle, how hard it is to be a gallerist,” Art Basel’s director Marc Spiegler told reporters on Tuesday.

Spiegler said that expanding Art Basel beyond the 290 galleries exhibiting this year would not help, as the show would risk becoming “a long, kind of death march experience,” with far too much art to digest.

He also dismissed the notion that making it to Art Basel indicated a gallery was financially solid.

“There are many galleries here who are going to struggle,” he said, adding that very few of the 290 were “cruising” financially.

‘Selling art like fish’

Existing on what could be described as the Basel art scene’s scrappy fringe, a gallery called The Proposal, specialising in installation concept art, was using stunts to attract pedestrians on their way to more prestigious venues.

In a space resembling a US fraternity house — including the hotdogs and beer in plastic cups – The Proposal was selling miniature statues of Damien Hirst encased in glass and sitting on a toilet, a spoof on Hirst’s influential series, The Tranquility of Solitude, which encases dead animals in the loo.

The Proposal’s chief Jeremie Jean-Ferdinand Maret joked that he was exploiting “the richest artist in the world (Hirst)… to refinance (his) gallery.”

The gimmick, helped by staff shouting “Damien Hirst for sale” out the window to passersby, was a last-ditch option available to a gallery on the brink of extinction, he told AFP, adding he would close after Art Basel and possibly reopen in Ibiza, partly because it was cheaper.

“I’m selling art like I’m selling fish. I’m screaming out (the window). All the things you shouldn’t do as a gallery,” Maret said.

‘A lot of talk’

Clare McAndrew, founder of Arts Economics research and consulting firm and lead author of the Art Market Report, said easing the gallery economic crunch had proved difficult.

“There is a lot of talk over the last year or two… but solutions haven’t come quite as quickly,” she told AFP.

Various things are being tried, like major galleries subsidising smaller ones to participate at important fairs, she said and added that online galleries would probably continue to attract mid-market buyers too.

McAndrew also said that while more prominent gallerists have always done better financially, the art market has been moving towards a “superstar, winner-take-all” mindset.

Hours after VIP viewing began at Art Basel Tuesday, the Hauser and Wirth gallery announced it had sold a painting by American artist Joan Mitchell for $14 million.

Public attention is often so focused on multi-million-dollar sales that some collectors erroneously feel they cannot get “anything good” for less then $100,000, McAndrew said.

“It threatens the entire infrastructure,” she added, stressing that emerging artists need medium-sized galleries to help them develop and survive.

“If that is not there, then where do (new artists) come from?” she said.

The news broke last Wednesday when Angela Chiu, a scholar at the SOAS, posted details of her three-month investigation into the gift on her webpage and social media.

Chiu spotted the one-metre-high torso in March standing in front of the collage’s Brunei Gallery. It was gifted to the SOAS by American alumni Mary and Paul Slawson who reportedly bought it minus any documents attesting to its provenance some 30 years ago. On its website, the SOAS describes the statue as “a delightful 13th-century Lopburi Buddha torso of Thai origin”.

“I was on the SOAS campus and noticed the sculpture sitting in the lobby of one of the buildings. An ancient Thai sculpture is a very unusual sight at the SOAS. The SOAS has a gallery for temporary exhibitions, but no permanent exhibition, no curator, and no conservator,” Chiu told The Nation via Facebook.

Chiu holds a Master’s and doctorate in Thai Art History from the SOAS. She penned the book “The Buddha in Lanna: Art, Lineage, Power, and Place in Northern Thailand”. The independent art historian is currently studying Sanskrit at the campus.

Chiu launched her investigation after becoming suspicious that the sculpture might have been stolen from Thailand.

“The owner of the sculpture acquired it 30 years ago, before the British law on provenance, so I sent questions to the SOAS. The SOAS is a public institution and is therefore obligated to respond to public requests under the UK’s Freedom of Information Act,” she explained.

She added that the SOAS received zero documentation of the ownership history or provenance of the sculpture. It was therefore highly possible that the school had accepted a potentially looted or illegally trafficked piece of Thai cultural property. The donors are US citizens, whom the SOAS helped to receive a US tax deduction on the gift valued at about 60,000 euros (Bt2.26 million). The school has denied the allegation.

“To be honest, the SOAS’s treatment of the Thai statue as a financial asset or goods [rather than Thai cultural property] seems colonialist,” she commented. Chiu, who also published the accusation on her website, said she’s concerned the figure might have been looted, a fate that has befallen many |historical artefacts from Southeast Asia.

In the century since the colonial era, Western museums – both public and private – have continued to collect looted cultural heritage. Early this year, the Culture Ministry began expediting the process to retrieve more than 100 ancient Thai artefacts from leading US museums.

“I believe the SOAS should respect Thailand’s rights to its cultural property, rights which are protected by UK, Thai and US laws as well as national and international codes of ethics surrounding cultural property. If the SOAS accepts a potentially looted and/or trafficked Thai object of cultural property, this incites more stealing and illegal excavation in Thailand. Those crimes end up taking away data that enable the Thai people to understand their history and culture. The SOAS is a leading international centre for the study of Asia. It should be a model for ethical, professional and sensitive treatment of Asian cultural property,” she explained.

The Nation emailed Peter D Sharrack of the SOAS but has yet to receive a reply.

Bringing back the looted treasures to Thailand is the task of the Culture and Foreign ministries.

Chiu recently voiced her suspicions to the Royal Thai Embassy in London whose officials said on Tuesday that “they have sent a message about this matter to the Foreign Ministry, which will liase with the relevant agencies”. It is understood that the Culture Ministry has yet to be officially contacted.

The Nation reported Chiu’s suspicions to the Fine Arts Department (FAD), submitting photographs and the link to Chui’s webpage http://www.soaswatch.org.

“The Culture Ministry’s Fine Art Department has not received information about this issue,” the FAD’s Anan Chuchote told The Nation, adding that he would ask Chiu to send her documents to the department.

“If we get information, we’ll look into whether the artefact is of Thai origin or not. If we feel there is a case to be made, we will ask the Thai authority’s ad hoc committee responsible for bringing back looted art from abroad to follow up on this issue,” Anan explained.

In fact, as part of her investigation, Chiu had already consulted Thai archaeologist Tanongsak Hanwong, a member of the ad hoc committee.

“This Thai treasure is very important as the 700-year-old artefact is among the rarest of Lopburi Buddha statues,” he said.

“I see a positive outcome for this case, as Chiu’s investigation has considerably cut the time required by Thai authorities for information gathering. The Thai authorities can now move to negotiating with the SOAS,” Tanongsak said.

IN A remote seaside town in Thailand where 16 years ago, a series of unsolved murders that left several children dead, the word “Albatross” written on their bodies, more murders have been committed in the same fashion. A young detective arrives from the city determined to solve this mystery only to find there’s more to it than meets the eye.

That’s the premise behind “Albatross: A Serial Killers’ Love Story”. The play, which ended its run last night, saw young playwright and director Thanaphon Accawatanyu and his Splashing Theatre Company return to Democrazy Theatre Studio where they staged their most critically acclaimed work “The Disappearance of the Boy on a Sunday Afternoon”. Only two years have passed, but already the audience was able to witness some significant progress.

The set didn’t cost much but toyed effectively with the audience’s perception and imagination. /Courtesy of Splashing Theatre

Thanks to the set, projection and lighting designers, the audience’s experience wasn’t like watching a film noir, but rather being on the set of a film noir production. And while the audience stand was placed at one side of the studio and we were not allowed to get up and move around, it was almost an immersive experience. Mirror panels were deftly used to expand the performance space and add mystery to the story; three pieces of thin black cloth ramped up that feeling as well and also, intentionally, limited the audience’s view.

Courtesy of Splashing Theatre

Meanwhile, the sound designer was a little too busy, or too eager, and some dialogue was drowned out. Such moments were not in the least mysterious bur rather bothersome.

Like many playwrights or scriptwriters of his age, Thanaphon could further improve on characterisation as many of his characters in “Albatross” spoke in too similar a manner. Also, he might want to study whether or not the radioactivity that’s affecting this town really fits this play, notwithstanding all influences he drew from a variety of films.

Where the progress was evident was in the fact that the cast also included seasoned thespians, like Duangjai Hiransri and Saifah Tanthana, and younger actors, like Sorawis Chinsangthip, none of them Splashing Theatre members. And while Thanaphon’s dialogue was not colloquial at times, these actors were always able to make it sound that way. By contrast, newcomers like A-tis Asanachinda and Thanaphan Tangsitprasert were less comfortable handling these difficult lines. The star of the evening was Lapin Laosunthara who was the most natural of all, and his detective character efficiently served as a bridge for the audience to cross over to this mysterious world.

It should also be noted that while “Albatross” was flying at Democrazy last weekend, some other members of this young group were staging another work “To Identify a Whale Shark, Look upon the Stars” across town at Whale Shark Books, M Theatre.

If that productiveness reminds you of more veteran groups like B-Floor, then the future of contemporary Thai theatre looks bright indeed.

KEEP FLYING

Follow these young and hard-working theatre artists at Facebook.com/SplashingTheatre. They should be back on stage soon.

MUMBAI’S slums are getting a colourful makeover thanks to an organisation that aims to change how people perceive deprived areas in India’s financial |capital.

Volunteers have transformed some 12,000 homes across four different areas in the city of 20 million people into a bright visual spectacle.

Artists have also created several elaborate murals as part of the initiative by non-profit group Chal Rang De, whose name means “Let’s Go Paint”.

An aerial view of houses painted in bright colours in Mumbai. Thousands of volunteers turn out for paint days in the slums, changing how poverty is perceived. AFP 

“We wanted to change the way people look at slums in Mumbai, in India,” says co-founder Dedeepya Reddy.

“When you say ‘slums’, all you think about are the negative things, the dirtiness. That becomes a reflection of the people who stay here but it’s not the case.

“They are really amazing people – they are very happy individuals – and we wanted their locality to be a reflection of who they are,” she added.

Around 40 per cent of Mumbai’s population live in slums, according to several agencies.

The settlements are typically cramped and structures are often dilapidated and lack access to proper toilets.

A mural enlivens a poor Mumbai neighbourhood. /AFP

Chal Rang De was born last year when Reddy had the idea to paint the outside of homes in the gloomy hilltop slum village of Asalpha in the north of the city.

Some 750 volunteers answered a call on social media to help brighten up the area by painting homes in a rainbow of colours.

Some in the city now even refer to the area as Mumbai’s “Positano”, after the Italian town with buildings in equally vibrant hues.

The group then turned their attention to three neighbouring settlements in the northern suburb of Khar. Almost 3,000 volunteers turned up over two weekends last month.

“It gives so much hope that people don’t care about getting their hands dirty and want to do something for society. It’s so simple, you take a paintbrush and feel like you can change the world,” says Reddy.

“When you see something that looks like an eyesore to someone else, it looks like a canvas to us,” says a paintbrigade organiser./AFP

The 31-year-old says residents are initially sceptical when she approaches them with the idea, but are quickly convinced.

“There are now lots of colours in our area. It looks like something new and is like a gift for us,” 30-year-old Sanjay Naresh Gaikar says outside his newly painted home.

Mumbai’s slums flood during the annual monsoon from June to September. Large areas of the city turn blue as residents place tarpaulins over their corrugated iron roofs to try to keep out heavy rains.

Chal Rang De has teamed up with a waterproofing company to lay a material that will prevent leaks for up to five |years.

“We are also colouring the top of that material so when you fly you will see a very different kind of Mumbai,” says Reddy.

After the monsoon ends, Chal Rang De will start planning ways to transform its next slum.

“When you see something that looks like an eyesore to someone else, it looks like a canvas to us. We want to colour the entire country,” she says.

The Haematology Department at Chiang Mai University will be the beneficiary of proceeds from sales in Udomsak Krisanamis’ latest charitable art initiative.

Gallery Ver in Bangkok is hosting the exhibition “All Time High: Art for Charity” this Saturday through July 7, featuring the work of Udomsak and 40 other artists, all Thais except for one Japanese.

There are paintings, prints and photographs, mixed media and sculptures.

Udomsak Krisanamis

Udomsak sees no distinction between art and life as he draws on the latter to create the former, turning key experiences into a continuing, colourful, abstract record of moments lived. His previous show at Gallery Ver, in 2016, was all monochrome, a shadow of the illness afflicting him at the time.

He started his career in Bangkok and then made a name for himself in New York in the mid-1990s before returning home and settling in Chiang Mai.

The 2016 show, “Paint It Black”, took its name from the Rolling Stones song, a bleak lament on depression, and Udomsak matched the Jagger and Richards with large, lyrical paintings in black, white and blue.

“I had a blast making these,” he said at the opening, “even though I’d been through some tough times, but that’s life. What you see here is the result of what came before.”

Udomsak’s “Any Day Now”/  Courtesy of Gallery Ver 

Now 52, Udomsak is always looking for ways to “give back” to society in gratitude for its merits. Last year he had his artworks printed on T-shirts to raise money for Maharaj Nakorn Chiang Mai Hospital, where he’d undergone treatment.

Now he’s recruited a slew of talent to do more “giving back”, with proceeds from the upcoming exhibition pledged to Chiang Mai University’s Haematology Department.

The show is filled with dazzling pieces. One of the many highlights is Rirkrit Tiravanija’s “Untitled 2018 (“The Odious Smell of Truth)”, in which he’s painted over newsprint atop the canvas. The Nation reserves further comment on his particular message.

“The Clam Point of Taoism”, a minimalist painting also completed  just this year by Kamin Lertchaiprasert, is another stand-out, as is Udomsak’s own 2016 mixed-media drawing “Any Day Now”.

Rirkrit Tiravanija’s “Untitled (The Odious Smell of Truth)” /Courtesy of Gallery Ver

Arin Rungjang has contributed a striking photograph from 2013, titled “The Living are Few But the Dead are Many”, a follow-on piece from his installation of the same name shown at the Sydney Biennale the year before. And Japanese Takeo Hanazawa offers a pair of lovely works, a 2018 acrylic painting and a 2017 lithograph, to the highest bidders.

Also participating in the exhibition are Kamol Paosawasdi, Nipan Oraniwesna, Thasnai Sethaseree, Chitti Kasemkitvatana, Pratchya Phinthong, Yuree Kensaku, Lee Anantawat, Viriya Chotpanyavisut, Korakit Arunanondchai, Tanachai Bandasak, Viriya Chotpanyavisut, Miti Ruangkritya, Nontawat Numbenchapol and Disorn Duangdao.

 Kamin Lertchaiprasert’s “The Clam Point of Taoism” /Courtesy of Gallery Ver

SOMETHING GIVEN BACK

– The exhibition “All Time High: Art for Charity” opens on Saturday and continues through July 7.

– Gallery Ver is in art cluster N22 on Narathivas Rachanakharin Soi 22, Bangkok.

– Learn more on the “GalleryVer” Facebook page.

Arin Rungjang’s “The Living are Few But the Dead are Many” /Courtesy of Gallery Ver

The Bangkok Art and Culture Centre (BACC) Foundation is about to raise its profile as vice chairperson Panya Vijinthanasarn and committee secretary Chatvichai Promadhattavedi seek a meeting with the city’s unimpressed governor, Aswin Kwanmuang, about funding support and sustainable management.

Whether the meeting is arranged or not, the foundation is organising a press conference to unveil an action plan later this month.

The move follows the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration’s (BMA’s) decision last month to establish a committee to study the way the controversial culture centre is managed. Eleven members are to be selected for the committee within 90 days.

BMA failure to contribute to BACC funding this year has left it struggling financially, but it still has plenty of supporters, including the Thai affiliate of multinational conglomerate B Grimm.

The fund-raising exhibition “In the Kingdom: 140th Anniversary of B Grimm” opening today (June 10) demonstrates how the private sector can help keep the arts alive. Continuing through June 20, the show also commemorates the BACC’s 10th anniversary.

Part of the exhibition focuses on the history of diplomatic relations between Thailand and Germany through postal artefacts – letters, postcards and stationery from the company’s collection. A second part constitutes contemporary art illustrations of B Grimm’s corporate philosophy – commissioned pieces by 12 leading Thai artists, plus three works on loan for the show.

“We want to raise funds for the BACC because it’s facing a financial crisis,” curator Somsuda Piamsumrit told The Nation.

“B Grimm spent more that Bt4 million in mounting this exhibition. Over Bt3 million of that went to the commissioned artists, whose works will be sold, and the rest covers the rent.”

Somsuda urged collectors and other art lovers to view the show and make a purchase to support the centre.

BACC director Pawit Mahasarinand said he appreciated the “truly special” project.

“The content of the exhibition is also educational and inspirational for the general public,” he said. “If all of the artworks are sold, I’m hoping we’ll get a few million baht, which will greatly help us continue our activities here.”

Regardless of the funding shortfall, the BACC will host all of the exhibitions and festivals previously planned for this year. Later this month “Beyond the Air We Breathe” will be on display on the ninth floor, featuring images by world-renowned photographers. Next month’s “PhotoBangkok” will occupy most floors.

In August, the Performative Art Festival resumes with the premieres of three interdisciplinary works. September brings the third annual “Early Years Project”, and October the start of the inaugural Bangkok Art Biennale and the 20th annual performing arts festival Asiatopia.

The Bangkok Theatre Festival and International Dance Festival return in November, and Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn will have her 10th and largest photo exhibition in December.

“We’re doing all of this,” said Pawit, “despite the fact that we haven’t been able to reimburse any project organisers through the Office of Culture, Sports and Tourism, where our Bt40-million budget is frozen until September 30, when it will be transferred to the Ministry of Finance. We’re doing all of this knowing that the more we spend, the shorter the time we have left.”

Pawit believes that, if the funding blockade continues, the programming will really feel the sting next year.

“Take our ‘Art Brut’ exhibition as one example: It’s all artwork created by mentally challenged people, and it has generous Japanese sponsors, but the planned ‘Art and Therapy’ exhibition and film screenings and performing arts that would nicely complement ‘Art Brut’ would have to be cancelled.”

“This year we’ve already reduced our support for Asiatopia and the Bangkok Theatre Festival, which affected hundreds of artists,

“Without the educational programmes, the public only sees the exhibited works. Hopefully the BMA will continue to pay our electricity bills – otherwise people might have to use their phone flashlights. But there will be no complementary programmes to inform, educate and inspire and the BACC will be less vibrant.

“We won’t cut the educational programmes for students in BMA-run schools, though, because that’s written in our contract.”

The BACC also has foreign cultural partners who have continued their strong support, Pawit said. The “Cinema Diverse” programme will continue next month with the screening of the acclaimed French film “Girlhood”.

“It’s also part of the French Embassy’s “French Highlights” programme,” Pawit said, “and their team has been very helpful and generous.

“We look forward to more collaborations like this with other countries too.”

US and Japanese researchers scanned the piece “Mother and Child by the Sea”, owned by the Pola Museum of Art in Hakone, west of Tokyo, and uncovered a page of the French newspaper Le Journal from January 18, 1902.

“While the reason for the presence of newsprint in the paint layers in a mystery, the discovery is significant for Picasso scholars due to the proximity of the date to the artist’s move from Paris to Barcelona,” said the Washington-based National Gallery of Art, whose researcher John Delaney led the project in Japan.

Picasso is thought to have moved to the Spanish city in early January 1902, bringing a few canvasses with him, and the newspaper article revealed in the painting suggests the work was completed some time after his move.

The scan also provided clear images of an underlying painting of a woman sitting down next to an absinthe glass with a spoon in it.

Picasso frequently reused canvasses or incorporated previous sketches into a final work.

However, it was not immediately clear why the artist used a page from Le Journal, which he was known to have read frequently.

“It may have been used… to cover previous layers before he painted another layer or the final composition of the mother and child,” scientists said.

The section of newsprint brought readers news of parliamentary clashes in London and the creation of a new annual exhibition of painting and sculpture at the Automobile Club of France, a gentleman’s club in Paris.

“Raccommodeuses de filets dans les dunes” (Women mending nets in the fields) dates from 1882 and was bought by an American collector in a hot bidding battle that boosted the selling price far above the estimated value of between three to five million euros.

“It’s a world record for a Van Gogh landscape, in the Dutch period, sold at auction,” Artcurial said.

“There are no more than two or three auctions of Van Gogh works in the world each year,” the auction house added. In France, Monday’s event was the first auction of a painting by the Dutch artist in more than two decades.

Van Gogh painted the work early in his career when he was 29 years old.

“We already find all the characteristics of a Vincent painting, especially his treatment of landscape… a remarkable work, a milestone in the artist’s career,” said Bruno Jaubert, associate director of modern art at Artcurial.

It was the only landscape Van Gogh did at the time, painted in the countryside near The Hague, Jaubert said.

The former owner was a European collector who had lent the work to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam for eight years until 2015.

The last sale at a Paris auction of a Van Gogh painting was in the mid-1990s of his “Le Jardin a Auvers” (The Garden at Auvers) which went for $10 million.

The museum recently presented a special talk on “Gifts from the United States”, given by experts from two leading museums where these historic gifts are originally displayed.

Suppawan Nongnut, curator of the Bangkok National Museum; and Praewchompoo Chunhaurai and Siriphen Worapassu, curator and archivist of King Prajadhipok Museum, illustrated memorable moments behind each of the gifts exchanged over the past two centuries.

Among the mementoes of friendship between the two countries are royal letters, royal portraits and portraits of the Presidents, the Most Illustrious Order of the Royal House of Chakri, royal attire and textiles, religious icons, musical instruments, royal weapons, and other royal gifts.

Suppawan spoke about the portrait of George Washington attributed to Rembrandt Peale (17781860) and that of Franklin Pierce by an unknown artist, a gift from President Pierce to King Pinklao in 1856.

“After Mr Townsend Harris met King Mongkut to present a message from President Pierce at the Grand Palace, he visited King Pinklao at Bowon Satan Mongkol Palace or the Front Palace, which today houses the Bangkok National Museum. He presented a special gift to His Majesty. It was the portrait of the First President of the United States, President George Washington, an oil on canvas, showing the president dressed in military uniform. King Pinklao was a great admirer of Washington and even named his oldest son Prince George Washington after the President. The foreign publication as well as the note penned by Mr. Harris, mentioned the prince as Prince George Washington. He later became known by his royal title Krom Phra Ratchawang Bowon Wichaichan, and was the last prince of the Front Palace of the Chakri Dynasty.”

The curator added that there is a similar painting at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in USA by American artist Rembrandt Peale. He painted around 79 portraits of President George Washington.

The portrait of Franklin Pierce, the fourteenth president of the United States, has never been displayed prior to its showing at the Bangkok National Museum because it has never been registered in the system.

“This painting drew from the original photo and it can be seen that the painting made the president looked younger. The original photo was taken around the time he acquired the position in 1853. There’s a pencil signature around the chest area of the shirt which reads ‘Peale R’, which could be Rembrandt Peale. However, Peale was not known to sign his works in pencil and this painting cannot be verified as a Peale original,” Suppawan added.

After the exhibition, both paintings will move to the living room of Phra Ti Nang Isares Rajanusorn.

Siriphen explained that King Prajadhipok was the first Thai monarch to make an official state visit the United States in 1931.

“At this point, the diplomatic relationship had reached its 113th year and the official state visit by Their Majesties King Prajadhipok and Queen Rampaipannee was a great success. The world knew more about Thailand and evidently appreciated Their Majesties determination to improve and develop the country in terms of politics, science, and art and culture. Throughout the threemonth state visit, the Americans were able to read royal news in The New York Times almost every day. His Majesty King Prajathipok gave an interview in which he stated that the Thai King took care of his people like a father cares for a son but he could not make every child be happy. However, he determined to make the Siamese as happy as was possible. It was also reported that His Majesty King Rama VII was very clever and friendly towards the news reporter,” she noted.

The two experts from King Prajadhipok Museum further shared stories about Time magazine from April 20, 1932, Volume 17, Number 16, which featured the photo of His Majesty King Prajadhipok’s Accession to the Thorne titled the “Siam King is the centre of faith in Thailand”.

The second piece was about the welcome speech from Harvard College to King Prajadhipok during the state dinner on April 29, 1931.

To find out more about the exhibition and these historic gifts, check out http://www.GreatAndGoodGriends.com.