Mapping Mandalay (Part 3)

Our final destination was the house of the famous painter U Sein Myint. But first, a stopover at Today books:

Today sells and publishes books in both Burmese and English. Loads of us snapped up historical and anthropological materials, plus a few copies of George Orwell’s Burmese Days. Also the good Dr Tin’s own book, written in his inimitably chatty style. (Ignore the awful title.)

The reason we were bound for U Sein’s house was because it’s a treasure trove of folk art. He’s been collecting these silk screens and chairs and coconut scrapers, these Buddhas and earth goddesses and apsaras and chinthes and dragons, these knickknacks and paddywhacks and giveadogabones since lord knows when.

I’m getting lazy as an archivist, so I’m kind of glad he didn’t give a general introduction to his collection – just stood around and talked to whoever wanted to talk about lacquerware (Adriaan) or zooiform bronze weights (Julie). The rest of us just kept snapping photos, like the slack-jawed tourists we are.

(Btw, that's him in the fifth picture down below, in a blue shirt.)

Ooh, check out one of the modern artworks below. The FCP folks were fascinated by it:

Afterwards, when we’d piled back into the bus, KS briefed us about our Singapore schedule, including a few words on presentations.

KS: I recommend that you present your art first and let them ask questions later. Better to go in and swing them through the artwork. You can never present enough context. You can never present enough history. So you’d better go in as artists rather than going in as historian.

I’m personally hoping for more performances. I won’t have to do so much transcription in that case – just a few clicks of the camera, some notes from the Q&A, and I’ll be done. I’m a very tired blogger at this point.

Oh, and then we all went to do tourist things for the remainder of our stay.

See you in Singapore!