Museums & galleries in Bali’s Sanur? Hard pass

It had long been on my bucket list of places to see in Bali: the Le Mayeur Museum on the beachfront at Sanur. It houses more than 80 oil paintings by Adrien-Jean Le Mayeur, a Belgian painter who arrived in Bali in the 1930s and spent more than a quarter of a century on the so-called Island of the Gods.

The museum is Le Mayeur’s former home studio where he spent his days painting portraits of the lush green landscape and his Balinese muse and much-younger wife, Ni Pollok. They met when she was 15 and married three years later.

Le Mayeur passed away from ear cancer in Belgium in 1958. He bequeathed the villa and all his art to Ni Pollok, who in turn bequeathed the estate to the government so it can be used as a museum before returning to her ancestral village to live out the rest of her days.

Today, the museum sits between towering hotels, while the unassuming frontage and minimal, warn-out signage mean most people walk past it without even knowing it’s there. Entry is $10, which would be a fair price if the place were well-maintained.

Unfortunately, it is not.

The buildings where the paintings and Le Mayeur’s collection of Balinese wood carvings and furniture are falling apart. Many of the light bulbs in the track ceiling lights installed years ago have blown out but nobody has bothered to replace them. And instead of being displayed inside humidity and temperature-controlled cases to preserve them in the tropics, the paintings — masterpieces on oil and canvas, as well as some that were painted on sackcloth during the Japanese occupation of WWII when Le Mayeur was held under house arrest — are simply hung behind glass. The result: every single piece has been damaged or destroyed, colour faded, edges gnarled. It was heartbreaking to see: a crime against history, culture and art.

Before heading back home I decided to get a bite to eat. There are hundreds of restaurants in Sanur and always good choices nearby, though the place that caught my eye while scrolling on my phone was a 15-minute ride from the beach. More than just another restaurant, Di Sanur Art Hub is an art gallery showcasing the work of local artists, promising artistic redemption on this figuratively rainy day.

Set on the “other” side of the highway in the backstreets of Sanur, a place few tourists visit, and at the end of a brick motorbike track surrounded by a pocket of the last remaining rice fields in Sanur, Di Sanur Art Hub is a slice of Ubud, Bali’s spiritual capital, in Sanur. The building is well designed with an industrial touch, and there’s a second dining area in the garden, covered with trellis and edged by a pond.

The gallery is currently exhibiting the works of Apel Hendrawan, a Hindu priest with full-body tattoos who, after overdosing on drugs, was incarcerated at Bangli Insane Asylum in east Bali. I’ve been there; the place is cut straight out of a nightmare. Apel’s paintings are too, with mountains of human skulls, demons watching humans copulating and depictions of hell in what is described on labels as visual representations of the artist’s “battle with the forces of dark and light”.

There is no denying Apel’s talent but his work all too dark for me. I grabbed a table in the dining room and ordered a Bintang for $3 — cheap for a cool place like this. I also ordered a tuna tataki that tasted all right and was a bargain for $6, though the Caesar salad I ordered next was swimming in sickly-sweet supermarket mayonnaise. It was so revolting I can still taste it now.

Perhaps there’s a lesson here: that bucket lists are recipes for disappointment and I should focus on visiting off-the-radar places like this restaurant instead. But it’s also been disappointing, too.

Without warning, dark clouds paint the sky and in a minute or two it’s raining cats and dogs. There’s no way I can ride my motorbike in this weather, so I order another Bintang and watch the rain engulf the world around me and search on my phone for new places to visit. Might as well make the best of it.

fact file

+ Museum Le Mayeur is on the beachfront in Sanur next door to the Bali Beach Hotel. Entry is $10. Open 8am to 4.30pm.

+ DI Sanur Art Hub is on Jalan (Stret) Kutat Lestari VI, No 88A, Sanur. Open 8am to 10pm. instagram.com/di.sanur_arthub