ArtScience Museum, Singapore
Ever wish you could escape from your current nine-to-five job and find a way to get paid doing something you love? What if you could make a living by playing with the toys you loved as a kid? Well, at the ArtScience Museum at Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, you can see first-hand how New York-based artist Nathan Sawaya turned his love of Legos into a career in art, sculpture, and imagination.
Showing at the ArtScience Museum from November 17 – April 14, “The Art of the Brick” is a fun and awe-inspiring exhibit for kids and adults alike. But don’t expect to see typical lego creations featuring your favorite Star Wars, Harry Potter, or Marvel characters. Sawaya’s creations aren’t “off the shelf” lego sets and I’m fairly sure he didn’t have a color instruction manual to assist in the construction. Still, if your kids are anything like mine, they will love it.
On exhibit, you’ll find more then 50 large sculptures, each made solely of Legos, most using thousands of Legos or more. The imaginative creations include furniture, portraits, miniature replicas of historic buildings, unique takes on the human form, and a 20+ foot Tyranosaurus Rex, to name a few.
My kids, age seven and nine, loved the scultpures and examined each closely. As we toured the exhibit, they walked around the sculptures as though they were plotting how to replicate it at home later that day. Thankfully, they didn’t ask for a shipment of thousands of Legos to support the cause.
In particular, my son, Cooper, loved to read and recite the signs associated with each piece, placing emphasis on the number of pieces used to construct them…in a way only Cooper can. They, and we, were amazed to learn that thousands of pieces were used to create each part of the exhibit. Definitely a “some assemble required” project!
In addition to inspecting and posing for pictures with the sculptures themselves, my kids were drawn to several interactive features throughout the exhibit. Throughout, there were great opportunities to interact with the art and with Legos in general. This including boxes of loose Legos, available for kids (and adults) to try to replicate some of the smaller, simpler designs on display. There was also a large area for kids to simply “freestyle” and use their own imagination to build a unique lego scultpure.
One of our favorite interactive displays was found among the amazing portraits Sawaya created completely of Legos. The portraits were of various historic figures including celebrities, world leaders, and personal friends of Sawaya and were quite stunning. Here, children can stand in front of a camera and have their image “pixelated” to mimic what their own portrait would look like, made of Legos.
The experience was really amazing, and well worth the admission of about $20 per adult / $13 per child. (FYI – Singapore residents also get a discounted rate off these prices.) Like other exhibits we’ve visited, the ArtScience Museum offers a great venue to host such an exhibit. The Lotus shaped building, located adjacent Marina Bay Sands, is a work of art on it’s own…and Sawaya wasn’t about to miss an opportunity to create his own version, again, completely out of Legos.
I highly recommend this exhibit for both chldren and adults, so hurry down to the ArtScience Museum and don’t miss it!
Not in Singapore? Don’t worry – “The Art of the Brick” is a traveling exhibit, (don’t ask me how the sculptures travel in one piece)and is now also on display at the Kimball Art Center in Park City, Utah, and is making it’s way to other cities in California, North Carolina, Ohio, and New Jersey. You can also find individual pieces on display in various museums across the US. Find more information on Nathan Sawaya, the exhibit, and when and where the it is traveling next at The Art of the Brick.
