Black House Museum

Baan Dam or Black House Museum

          Baan Dam or Black House Museum is located in Nang Lae District, Amphoe Mueang, Chiang Rai Province. It is constructed by Prof. Thawan Duchanee, a national artist who is an expert in painting and sculpturing. The appearance of Baan Dam is a village-like community, originated from Lanna architecture and all houses are painted with black color which is the Prof. Thawan’s favorite and also the ideal of the name “Baan Dam” or Black House Museum. Every house is decorated with beautiful and delicate woodcuts and animal remains, such as, buffalo horns, antlers, and animal bones, like elephant bones and so on. Even though Prof. Thawan had passed away, Baan Dam or Black House Museum is still opened for the tourists to come visit the unique and outstanding beauty.

The black houses in the museum are surrounded with a plenty of trees, serene atmosphere, and all the 36 houses are differentiated from one another. These houses are not built for living, but for conserving the collections of Prof. Thawan. Additionally, there is another house that is on process of constructing, which is the museum of the exhibition of Prof. Thawan’s artworks and collections. The museum is made of teakwood with woodcuts decoration.  Baan Dam or Black House Museum is considered one of the most valuable and conservative tourist attractions in Thailand, as the museum has several distinctive and worthy Lanna artworks. In fact, Chiang Rai also has Wat Rong Khun (The White Temple), that the whole temple is painted with white color as if the tourists visit the heaven. Therefore, there is a comparison that the artworks of Prof. Thawan are hell-like artworks because they have black colors, contrastive to The White Temple of Prof. Chalermchai. Prof. Thawan answered this issue that “It is just only the comparison, because my works are painted with black, which referred to hell and theirs are white like heaven. Baan Dam is not a hell-like architecture, the people here call it Baan Dam Nang Lae that only have black color. That is why most of the people are trying to compare my works to theirs.”