Marina Bay Sands is an icon of Singapore’s glittering skyline and the embodiment of the city-state’s palpable energy. Designed by renowned Israeli-Canadian architect Moshe Safdie and opened in 2010, its playful architecture has caught the imagination of travelers from around the world. Three tapering towers support the three-acre SkyPark on top of the building, replete with the world's largest rooftop infinity pool, gardens, and a heart-stopping view of the Lion City’s panoramic vistas of Gardens by the Bay and its futuristic Supertree Grove, the durian-shaped Esplanade, the mythical half-fish half-lion Merlion, as well as Spectra, the dazzling nightly light and water show at the event plaza at Marina Bay Sands.
Visitors can also take advantage of the resort’s sampan rides, rest their heads in Singapore’s largest hotel of more than 2,200 extravagant rooms and suites, hunt down the latest must-haves at Asia’s best luxury shopping mall, and enjoy world-class dining and entertainment every night. Marina Bay Sands is in the process of a multi-year transformation resort-wide that will elevate its offerings to dazzling new heights in the years to come.
Spectacular site-specific art installations and blockbuster exhibitions at ArtScience Museum underscore Marina Bay Sands’ ongoing commitment to making art accessible to the public while its carefully curated line-up of art-filled activities celebrate Singapore’s vibrant multicultural heritage. The first half of 2023 alone has seen star-studded concerts and film premieres, culinary festivals and international art fairs such as the long-awaited debut of Southeast Asia’s largest art fair ART SG take place at the iconic destination.
Marina Bay Sands Art Path brings together 10 monumental art installations by some of the world’s most renowned artists that weave a path from the 23-storey atrium in the hotel towers to the buildings’ exterior. The path began with eight works handpicked by Safdie to complement Marina Bay Sands’ conceptual and aesthetic design: Antony Gormley’s Drift, a 14.8-ton stainless steel polyhedral matrix that floats cloud-like in the Hotel Tower 1 atrium; Chongbin Zheng’s Rising Forest 升林, comprising 83 massive ceramic vessels that hold aloft a canopy of trees in the Hotel Atrium; James Carpenter’s Blue Reflection Facade with Light Entry Passage, comprising 80 stainless steel fins and more than 200 glass fins that echo the serpentine curves of the casino façade; Ned Kahn’s Wind Arbor featuring 260,000 shimmering aluminium “flappers” cloaking the entire western facade of the Hotel Atrium, Rain Oculus which funnels rainwater into a whirlpool at the intersection of the mall and the waterfront promenade, and Tipping Wall, which features 7,000 tipping water channels covering the facade of a cooling tower that perform a mechanical dance as water runs down the wall before being recycled back into the system; and Sol LeWitt’s Wall Drawing #917, Arcs and Circles, and Wall Drawing #915, Arcs, Circle and Irregular bands that greet visitors arriving at Bayfront MRT station and in the main hotel entrance.
Art Path has since been extended with the addition of Zhan Wang’s stainless steel Artificial Rock #71 and #86, inspired by The Scholar’s Rock; Israel Hadany’s Motion, which consists of two glass and stone “islands” that mimic river currents; and Anish Kapoor’s Sky Mirror rising from the lily pond of ArtScience Museum.
Exploring the intersections of art, science, culture and technology, the auspicious lotus blossom-inspired ArtScience Museum earned the moniker “the welcoming hand of Singapore” with its 10 “fingers” pointing towards the sky. “Fingertip” skylights offer a peek into the Museum’s 5000-square-metres of gallery space that have hosted blockbuster artists – Leonardo da Vinci, Salvador Dalí, Andy Warhol, Vincent van Gogh and M.C. Escher, to name but a few – alternated with major exhibitions that bring science to a wider audience, tackling meaty subjects such as big data, particle physics, paleontology, cosmology and space exploration.
ArtScience Museum has garnered an impressive following, with institutional partners from all over the world including the American Museum of Natural History in New York, the British Museum in London, Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan and the Australian Centre for Moving Image in Melbourne.
Before the mania for immersive and interactive art swept through the art world, Marina Bay Sands’ collaboration with the visionary Tokyo-based international art collective teamLab blazed a trail for the genre.
“Future World: Where Art Meets Science” opened at the ArtScience Museum in 2016 as teamLab's first and largest permanent artwork exhibition outside Japan, drawing more than three million visitors across its first six years. Its revamp at the end of last year resulted in the addition of three new interactive artworks that rethink and showcase the endless possibilities of play. Together, the Exploring New Frontiers and City in a Garden galleries weave a narrative of how harmonious co-existence with nature has endowed humanity with the imagination and technology to explore beyond the stars. Astonishing multi-sensory scenes of a crystal universe are spliced with abstractions that explore nature’s phenomenon of self-organisation, and flocks of swooping birds.
The recently transformed Digital Light Canvas by teamLab in The Shoppes at Marina Bay Sands has evolved into a nature-based adventure for visitors to explore the ever-changing flora and fauna of our ecosystem. The light undulates, whilst creatures and flowers are brought to life by the viewer’s interactions with this remarkable installation. Visitors are also invited to customise their own T-shirts, tote bags and more to take home memories of Marina Bay Sands.
More than just a destination, Marina Bay Sands is the jewel in the crown of Singapore’s flourishing arts and cultural scene.
Visitors to Marina Bay Sands can check out current exhibitions and programming here.
Modern & Contemporary Art auction will take place at Marina Bay Sands, Singapore, on 2 July 2023, with a preview exhibition from 29 June through 2 July.