Shame on me that when I heard about the “ARMA” museum I thought first about Box-Jenkings “Autoregressive Moving Average” (ARMA) which is a stochastic autoregression model to analyze time series. To my surprise I found that the ARMA Museum in Ubud, Bali (Indonesia) analyses time series in a very different way then I expected and the name here stands for Agung Rai Museum of Art, named after the founders of the ARMA foundation Mr. and Mrs. Agung Rai.

The museum is a very impressive mirror of all styles of Balinese Arts and exhibiting the works of I Gusti Nyoman Lempad, Ida Bagus Made as well as in a separate building the fusion of Balinese and foreign arts including Walter Spies.

ARMA is aiming to be more than just a Museum, in terms of exhibiting great works in a great manner, but also is an active part in practicing balinese cultural heritage, like dance and wood carving. The building has the typical grass thatched roof and opens up large halls inside. And the garden around is a beautiful merger of sculptures and nature.

The entrance ticket includes a Balinese coffee for free and the very nice wardens that show you around, are excited and interested about their museum as if they would have inhaled the mission of spreading the spirit (in the usual Balinese polite way).

This museum convinced me that I need to come back for longer after a lot of reading.