Photograph: The Jim Thompson Art Centre
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Photograph: Jim Thompson Art Center | Bangkok’s art galleries
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Jim Thompson Art Centre

Item: Jim Thompson Art Center
Author: Kaweewat Siwanartwong

Art | Galleries
Siam

Monday June 22 2026

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Written by Kaweewat Siwanartwong

Senior Staff Writer, Time Out Thailand

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Time Out says

What is it? A four-storey, 3,000-square-metre art centre planted in the middle of the city, a stone's throw from BACC. Inside the Jim Thompson Art Center you find a cafe, a library, a gallery and a restaurant, all pulling together to make art feel a little less daunting for the rest of us.

Why we love it: The place wears its mission lightly, setting out to bring both contemporary and traditional work within easy reach without ever lecturing you about it. It's grown into a proper community hub for central Bangkok, the sort of spot where you can catch a rotating exhibition, settle in with a coffee and lose an afternoon without really meaning to. The real charmer is the rooftop, a leafy, photogenic perch that's as good for a quiet sit-down as it is for a sneaky photo or two. Add the easy access and the genuine range on offer and you've got somewhere that suits the dedicated art lover and the casual drifter alike.

Time Out tip: The galleries need a ticket, but plenty of the building doesn't. The open-air plaza, the rooftop garden, the design shop and the lovely William Warren Library on the second floor are all yours for free.

Kasemsan 2, Rama 1 Road. Open daily, 10am-6pm. Entry is B50 for adults (or B250 for a combined ticket with the Jim Thompson House Museum).

Details

Address: 10/1 Kasem San 2 Alley, Wang Mai, Pathum Wan; Bangkok; 10330

Opening hours:: Open Daily 10am-6pm

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What’s on

Living in an Elastic Time

Craft here reads like a way of staying present. The exhibition looks at time across Thailand and Southeast Asia as something layered and cyclical, shaped by ritual, labour and shared experience rather than strict progression. Makers move between past and present with a quiet ease, holding inherited knowledge while adjusting to what now demands. Objects carry that negotiation, each one marked by repetition. Slowness becomes intentional, offering an alternative to constant speed and easy consumption. Nothing feels rushed, yet nothing stands still either. April 30-16 August. Free. Jim Thompson Art Center, 10am-6pm

Until Aug 16, 2026

See artists mess with your sense of time at Living in an Elastic Time

First staged in Cheongju Craft Biennale, this group exhibition arrives in Bangkok following a debut as the Invited Country Pavilion in Cheongju, South Korea. The project grows from an ongoing exchange between Thailand and the Republic of Korea, setting craft alongside contemporary art across Southeast and East Asia. At its core sits ‘Elastic Time’, a curatorial thread that questions how time behaves across the region. Forget neat timelines. Here, past, present and future overlap, repeat and quietly reshape one another. The Cheongju edition sets the tone as a cross-cultural conversation, where material, process and memory carry equal weight. Artists approach craft not as something fixed, but as a way to consider what unfolds now, and what might come next. Until August 16. Free. Jim Thompson Art Center. 10am-6pm

Until Aug 16, 2026