Could any western architect or designer have come up with a more beautiful or appropriate setting for the stone carvings found at the ancient & ruined city of Anuradapura, one time capital of Sri Lanka? The sculptures, dating from 4th C. BC to 11th C. AD, are set on plinths of un-mortared terracotta bricks (for the flexibility of exhibits on display?), with dividing walls of a similar brickwork, sloppily but appealingly mortared. The museum is set in an ex-British Colonial mansion and this space would probably have been the servants’ quarters. The floor is now in cast concrete and the walls are white-washed. There is no lighting other than the daylight which makes it through a series of arched openings in the facade, and this soft illumination is all the sculptures need to reveal their shapes. Thinking of the fortunes spent recently on some of Europe’s grandes oeuvres, one wonders if such fancy dressing does anything for the salad.
