Museums in Indonesia

Museum MACAN, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nusantara, opened in West Jakarta in 2017 as the first Indonesian museum built to show a modern and contemporary collection to international standards. Changing exhibitions run alongside the permanent holdings, and it has hosted Yayoi Kusama. Where the Bali museums on this list look inward at Balinese painting, this is the one that sets Indonesian art beside work from elsewhere.

The National Museum on Merdeka Square holds the broadest collection in the country, gathering prehistory, Hindu-Buddhist statuary, ceramics and ethnographic material from every island into one building. Locals call it Gedung Gajah, the elephant house, after the bronze elephant outside. If you only see one museum in Indonesia, this is the one that covers the whole archipelago rather than a single region.

Museum Bank Indonesia occupies the old Javasche Bank building in Kota Tua, Jakarta's Dutch quarter, and follows the country's monetary history from the spice trade through independence to the 1998 crisis. The restored banking hall and the vaults are as much the point as the displays. It stands on Fatahillah Square beside two other museums on this list, which makes it the easiest one to slot into a morning.

Museum Wayang stands on Fatahillah Square in Kota Tua and holds several thousand puppets: the leather shadow figures of wayang kulit, the wooden wayang golek of Sunda, and sets from China, Vietnam, India, Cambodia and Europe placed alongside for comparison. Performances are sometimes held in the courtyard. Of everything here it is the most single-minded, following one art form across the whole country.

Museum Tekstil fills a 19th-century villa in Tanah Abang and sets batik, ikat and songket from across the islands side by side, so the regional differences show up in one room rather than one province at a time. A workshop in the grounds teaches visitors to wax and dye their own batik, and the garden grows the plants the dyes come from. It is the most hands-on entry on this list.

Established by Balinese art-lover Sujata Neka, the Neka Art Museum displays a wide array of wayang and Ubud-style paintings, sculptures, Keris daggers and photographs from the 1930s to contemporary times. Its six buildings each house a separate gallery, tracing how Balinese painting evolved as local artists absorbed outside influences. Traditional Balinese architecture and a large garden make the visit a relaxed one.

The Blanco Renaissance Museum is the hilltop house and studio of Antonio Blanco, the Spanish-Filipino painter who settled in Ubud in the 1950s, looking down over the Campuhan river. It shows his work and his son Mario's, and the house itself, with its ornate gates and rooftop view, is half the visit. Of the artist-house museums on this list, this is the theatrical one and Le Mayeur in Sanur is the quiet one.

The Agung Rai Museum of Art in Ubud offers a whole gamut of Balinese creativity and art and is one of the best museums in Indonesia that showcases traditional art forms. Its collection runs from classic Kamasan-style paintings to works by Walter Spies and Adrien Le Mayeur. It is also a living arts centre rather than only a gallery, running art workshops, traditional dance performances and guided tours.

A walk through Ubud is incomplete without spending a while at Puri Lukisan Museum, home to several masterpieces of traditional modern Balinese art. The museum collection includes paintings from Sanur, Batuan, Keliki, and Young Artist schools of art, and is the perfect spot for art-lovers seeking a glimpse of Indonesian art history with a cup of coffee.

The prime museum for Balinese Culture, Museum Negeri Propinsi in Bali is the island's central museum located in its provincial capital Denpasar. Housing over 10,000 artworks, the museum has a variety of pieces on display- from prehistoric stone sarcophagi to dance costumes and masks, making it a comprehensive collection of the island's heritage.

Sitting between the Inna Grand Bali Beach hotel and Jalan Hang Tuah, the Le Mayeur Museum can be found on the beachfront of Sanur at Sindhum in Bali, right behind a row of stalls selling souvenirs and artworks. It was the first museum in Sanur and holds the work of Adrien-Jean Le Mayeur de Merpres, who painted on wood, canvas, paper, cardboard and plywood, alongside traditional Balinese art and local artefacts he collected while living here.

The Ullen Sentalu Museum is built upon the on historic sites, such as Hastorenggo Guesthouse building that is owned by Sultan Hamengkubuwono VII (1877-1921) and Kaliurang Three Nations Commission Building. The word 'Ullen Sentalu' is an acronym of the phrase in Java language that is 'Ulating Blencong Sejatine Tataraning Lumaku'.

The Dream Museum Zone in Legian is a 3D trick-art gallery rather than a collection: painted rooms and floors that resolve into an illusion when photographed from the marked spot, including joke versions of Van Gogh and the Mona Lisa. Staff point out the angles. It is the one entry here aimed at children and phone cameras rather than at looking at art.

Museum Rudana sits at Peliatan, just east of Ubud, on three tiered floors looking out over rice terraces. Nyoman Rudana opened it in 1995, and the hang runs from classical Balinese painting through the established modern Indonesian names to living artists, with a commercial gallery next door selling the newer work. It is the Bali museum most interested in artists who are still working.

Museum Semarajaya stands in the old Klungkung palace compound in east Bali, well away from the Ubud cluster most of this list belongs to. It keeps gold-woven songket, photographs, and an account of the 1908 puputan in which the Klungkung court walked into Dutch gunfire, along with a room on the salt farming of the coast nearby. It is the entry here that is about a place rather than about art.

If volcanoes fascinate you, the Batur Geopark museum in Bali is not to be missed. With models accompanied by interactive displays and rock samples, the geology of Mt.Batur and the workings of a volcano are brought to life. A UNESCO project, this museum is best enjoyed with your kids while exploring Bangli.

The Kite Museum opened in Pondok Labu, South Jakarta, in 2003 and holds several hundred kites in a Javanese-style house and garden, from Indonesian fighting and ceremonial kites to examples from Japan, China and Malaysia. Workshops let visitors make and paint their own. It is the smallest and most specific museum on this list, and the one that holds up best with children in tow.

Located near the Sunda Kelapa Harbour, Museum Bahari exhibits the history and the importance of sea trade via the harbour that helped build Jakarta's economy. Also known as the Maritime Museum, it occupies 17th-century Dutch East India Company warehouses and traces the maritime history of Indonesia's regions. The collection includes boats and canoes along with wax figures of explorers such as Vasco da Gama, Cheng Ho and James Cook.

The Museum of Fine Arts and Ceramics occupies the former Court of Justice on Fatahillah Square, a Dutch neoclassical building of 1870. Upstairs hangs Indonesian painting from the colonial period onward, including Raden Saleh and Affandi; downstairs is ceramic ware from across the archipelago and from China. It sits between the Jakarta History Museum and Museum Wayang, so the three make one walk.

Satria Mandala is the armed forces museum, set in a South Jakarta house that was once Dewi Sukarno's residence, and its 14 acres hold dioramas of the independence struggle indoors with tanks, aircraft and naval hardware out on the grass. The name is Sanskrit for the sacred ground of the knights. Of the Jakarta museums here it is the one with most of its collection outdoors.

Museum Sejarah Jakarta or the Jakarta History Museum is one of the largest museums in Old Jakarta Town. It is filled with more than 23,000 artefacts from the Dutch civilization and various Indonesian kingdoms can be seen here, a proud display of the heritage of the region.

Situated in Kebayoran in Jakarta, the Art:1 New Museum, as its name suggests, is a recently opened contemporary art museum. It stores a collection of artefacts dedicated to Indonesia's arts and culture. The complex of the museum is divided into two buildings.