Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art opens in Colombo

The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) was launched on December 12 at the Colombo Innovation Tower.

Although the Museum is yet to have its permanent home, the stakeholders behind this concept deemed it was the right time to introduce the public to modern and contemporary art of Sri Lanka.

The founding committee of MMCA is comprised of highly skilled set of individuals ranging from international curators, professionals and industry leaders.

Collectively they hope that the museum and its collections will be used for research, conservation, display and study of art for the educational benefit of the public.

Ajit Gunawardene, Chair of the founding Committee spoke to the press at the launch saying, “What we are launching today, is not the museum itself. It is the beginning of the journey towards the museum. It (the Museum) was about Sri Lankans understanding the pulse of the nation through art.” 

Curator for the education and public engagement of the MMCA Ruhanie Perera elaborated further on the educational aspect of the museum.

“This is a public museum dedicated to the display, education, research and conservation of modern and contemporary art. Education is at the heart of everything that we do. Our understanding is to engage with conserving of what we are hoping will be an active discovery into learning who are publics are, who are communities are and how we can work with them.”

She stated moreover on how they try not to pre-determine who their audiences could be. The museum aims to embrace inclusivity and will have trilingual access to all their publications and literature. 

The Museum is a privately funded not-for-profit organisation that can be freely accessed by the public. Currently the Museum’s first exhibition ‘one hundred thousand small tales’, is being held at the Colombo Innovation Tower on it’s 17th floor and will be there till March 2020.

‘One hundred thousand small tales’, is an exhibition comprising of over 150 artworks by 43 artists curated by Sharmini Pereira. It was first commissioned for the Dhaka Art Summit

They will be having exhibition tours daily at 12.30 p.m. in English and on weekends at 3.30 p.m. there will be tours conducted in SInhala and Tamil as well.

You can find out more about Museum and the events that are taking place on their website www.mmca-srilanka.org

(Text by Ruqyyaha Deane and Pix by Amila Gamage)