Sri Lanka’s Very First Contemporary Art Museum Opens on 17th Floor of the City’s ‘Innovation Tower’

After three years of preparation, the Museum of Modern and
Contemporary Art Sri Lanka will open to the public in Colombo
tomorrow. It is the first museum devoted to 20th and 21st century
art in Sri Lanka. The museum will be temporarily located on the
17th floor of the ocean-facing Colombo Innovation Tower—a space
that hosts much of the city’s creative community, including a
cross-industry network of startups and design brands.

“While the museums of Sri Lanka have sought to serve the past,
they have done so at the exclusion of our modern and contemporary
histories,” explained Ajit Gunewardene, chair of the museum’s
founding committee, according to ARTRA
Magazine, a monthly Sri Lankan art magazine founded in
2012. “Sri Lanka’s rich historic culture underscores the way in
which the island can lead the way in the region as a modern and
contemporary museum destination.”

The new institution’s debut exhibition is “One Hundred Thousand
Small Tales,” a group show, originally commissioned for the 2018
Dhaka Art Summit, that addresses art production in Sri Lanka from
its independence in 1948 to the present. It will be on view for
three months. No details have yet been released about further
programming. Sharmin Pereira will serve as the museum’s chief
curator.

“Following the international success of the exhibition in Dhaka,
I am delighted to bring ‘One Hundred Thousand Small Tales’ to Sri
Lanka, within the context of a much-awaited first for the country,
as it steps out to establish a museum—on its own terms and its own
journey,” said Pereira, according to ARTRA. “The
opportunity to present the exhibition in Sri Lanka makes it not
only possible to add to the list of artworks but most importantly
to bring the work of over 45 modern and contemporary artists to
audiences in Sri Lanka.”

Interest in contemporary art has grown in Sri Lanka over the
past decade, and in Colombo in particular. The Colombo Art
Biennale, which had its first edition in 2010, aims to strengthen
the Sri Lankan contemporary art scene both locally and
internationally. And Colomboscope, a festival inaugurated in 2013,
showcases an interdisciplinary range of art forms.

The new museum hopes to support artists working both in Sri
Lanka and abroad, and to build the nation’s first publicly
accessible collection of modern and contemporary art.

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Opens on 17th Floor of the City’s ‘Innovation Tower’ appeared
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