• Issue
  • Feb 28, 2020

Haryanto Adikoesoemo: Pillar for Syncretism

Portrait of HARYANTO ADIKOESOEMO. Photo by Yuwono Widiasta. Courtesy Museum MACAN, Jakarta.

Outfitted in a crisp, jay-blue suit complemented with a narrow black tie and pocket square, Haryanto Adikoesoemo welcomed more than 100 guests to a darkened ballroom at Jakarta’s Ritz-Carlton Pacific Place hotel. It was August 2019, and Museum MACAN was holding its first gala. Seated around candlelit tables, each festooned with a pair of dramatically arched, feathered wings, the audience included some of the capital’s elite, who had been gathered for an evening of sartorial peacocking and, as the jovial chairman unabashedly emphasized during his brief welcoming remarks, fundraising. All proceeds from the night’s auction were to go toward the Museum MACAN Foundation, which manages the three-year-old museum and Adikoesoemo’s collection of international modern and contemporary art. Indicative of his ethos, he shared the stage with his daughter Fenessa, MACAN’s chairwoman, who utilized the spotlight to detail the foundation’s goals in developing art education, while the elder Adikoesoemo, a proud father, stood back.


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