Queen’s Gallery; King Prajadhipok Museum; Democracy Monument

Having been to all of the Bangkok “must sees” in my guidebook and walking tour app that I wanted to visit, this morning I covered a few of the “also sees.” This included the Queen’s Gallery, the King Prajadhipok Museum, and the Democracy Monument.

All three are clustered closely together. And they’re near Wat Ratchanatdaram, which I visited yesterday and not terribly far from Golden Mount, which I visited two or three days ago. (Days are starting to blend in my mind.)

Because of that proximity, visiting these sights on one of those two days might have made sense. But I wanted to see my higher-priority attractions first because I wasn’t sure I’d get through them all. So, here we are.

Queen’s Gallery

The Queen’s Gallery is a small art gallery featuring Thai art. I’m not familiar with Thai art and, as I said, I’d completely my top-of-list items. So I figured I might as well force a little art into my life.

(After saying that, I desperately hope I can find a fish picture to include here so my most loyal reader won’t desert me.)

The Queen’s Gallery is small. The footprint of the building is far from huge. The exhibits are on three levels, but there’s an atrium that takes up a fair amount of space on each of the upper two floors.

There’s a fourth floor, but it contains an education space and it was closed today.

When I went in, the person at the ticket desk told me the exhibits are on three levels. Looking at the paintings on the walls of the ground floor, I didn’t think it was one of them.

From the distance of the ticket desk, they looked quite trivial and uninteresting to my unschooled eye. My guess is that a schooled eye would find them even more so.

I honestly thought it was the gift shop. So I headed upstairs.

All the works at the Queen’s Gallery when I was there are quite contemporary. (I said “when I was there” because I don’t know if they have a permanent collection or if they only have rotating temporary exhibits. How contemporary? I don’t know. The little placards beside each of the pieces listed the artist, the title, and the medium, but not the creation date.

The second floor included some paintings that looked almost normal, if modern and stylistically out there. Others looked farther out there, but nowhere near the almost painfully radiant, nearly fluorescently coloured, otherworldly paintings and sculptures on the third floor.

Don’t get me wrong. There were some cartoonish paintings on the second floor as well, but less cartoonish and less stark than on the floor above.

Having seen the second and third floors, and thinking that the first-floor paintings were part of the gift shop, I went back to the ticket desk and asked if the first floor (the entrance level) was one of the exhibit levels. Yes, it was.

I then took a closer look at the paintings on that level of the Queen’s Gallery. My opinion of them didn’t change. Not only that but, unlike the small placards next to the works on the second and third floors, the ones on this level all had numbers that I assume were prices. So, maybe it was a combined giftshop/exhibit. (Pssst, mister. Do you want to buy a painting?)

One of the photos I posted above (fairly close to this paragraph, but I don’t know where your browser will render it) is of a painting at the Queen’s Gallery that, if you look closely, could be said to include some elements that could very well be interpreted as representing fish. I hope that satisfies my regular reader.

Prajadhipok Museum

In the Thai calendar, King Prajadhipok, although he wasn’t king at the time, was born on Wednesday, the 14th day of the waning moon in the 11″ month, the Year of the Snake. This translates to November 8, 1893. He ascended the Throne on November 26, 1925, and abdicated on March 2, 1935. He died on May 30, 1941 in England.

Technically, he wasn’t the king of Thailand, but that’s only because the country was called Siam then, not Thailand.

The King Prajadhipok Museum tells the story of the life and times of King Prajadhpok through text in Thai and English, old photographs, and some artifacts such as royal tableware, military uniforms, and movie posters.

Wait, you say, movie posters? What’s up with that?

King Prajadhipok loved watching films and took an interest in filmmaking. And not just an interest, he made a film. He shot it on 16mm film and called it “The film I made.” I believe there is a lèsse majesté law here in Thailand. I don’t know if it applies to now-deceased kings, but in case so, I won’t comment on the creativity of that title.

After he moved to a place called Ambara Villa, in Dusit Palace, he changed the name of the film to “The Amphon Film.”

He also made a short children’s film called “Magic Ring.”

Jumping around chronologically (me, not the museum), the museum contains a photograph of not-yet-King Prajadhipok when he reached his twelfth birthday and transitioned from a boy to a young adult. At that time, he received formal investiture with his full name and title inscribed on a golden tablet, “His Royal Highness Prince Prajadhipok Saktitejana Kromakhun Sukhothai Dharmaraja”, Or “Prince of Sukhothai” as his feudal title.

I had to wait to be a year older than that to be bar mitzvahed at age 13. I didn’t have my name inscribed on a golden tablet then. I think I might have received a pen set, along with some other gifts. And it was about that time that people stopped calling me “Roly Poly Joely.” They still thought of me that way. They just stopped calling me that. A classier name and a formal title inscribed on a golden tablet would have been nice too.

The future king was later enrolled in Eton College in England and got an education there. And then, from 1911 to 1913, he studied horse artillery, a 2-year program at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, England. I’ve included on this page a picture of a photograph from his time in military training. He’s the person of smaller stature in the photo. If it weren’t for the lèsse majesté law, I’d comment about what’s going on in that picture. But if I did comment, I don’t think I’d be able to do so without referencing Monty Python and specifically John Cleese.

Before becoming king (and before marrying) he was a monk for a while. (Pear, the guide on the canal cruise I took, said it’s common for Thai Buddhist men to be monks for a few years and then leave the monkhood. She said most devout Buddhist men do that.)

For much of his reign, King Prajadhipok served as an absolute monarch. But then, in 1932, while King Prajadhipok was vacationing, a revolution happened, as revolutions often do in absolute monarchies. The revolutionaries won and asked King Prajadhipok to stay on as king, but as a constitutional monarch rather than an absolute one.

He was reluctant to stay on, but he was talked into doing so. He eventually became convinced that, because the country contained a lot of monarchists, there would be bloodshed if he abdicated. So he agreed to stay on and continued to serve as a constitutional monarch until his abdication in 1935.

I was able to report on all of this, not by remembering it, but because I took pictures of some of the signage. I didn’t use all of the pictures I took because I didn’t want this post to go on forever. If you’re interested you can probably find more information on the worldwide webby thing.

It’s an interesting little museum. I’m not disappointed I went.

Democracy Monument

I’d passed by the Democracy Monument before, but I didn’t know what it was then. It’s a big hulking up-reaching monument sitting in the middle of a traffic circle in the middle of a major thoroughfare. It was built in 1932 to commemorate the coup (see above) that converted Thailand (then Siam) from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional monarchy.

By the way, I can’t put down constitutional monarchies too much, and not just because of the lèsse majesté law. I live in a constitutional monarchy, Canada. But ours is a particularly weird one because, for the vast majority of my life, the Queen of Canada was Queen Elizabeth. Now the King of Canada is King Charles.

And yes, those are official titles, separate from the “King or Queen of the United Kingdom.” But, yes, they are the same person.

At least the King of Thailand lives in Thailand. The King of Canada doesn’t live in Canada.

I usually end my morning entries with something to the effect of, “And then I had lunch.” However, I intentionally skipped lunch today for a reason that will become apparent when you read my afternoon entry, which should be posted a few hours after this one.