---
node: spot_chiang_rai_baandam_museum
type: spot
slug: baandam_museum
destination: dest_chiang_rai
title: "Baan Dam Museum"
lead: "The Black House is the estate of the artist Thawan Duchanee, some forty black buildings holding animal bones, hides and horn arranged as furniture. It is the deliberate opposite of the White Temple, and its maker meant it that way."
published: 2026-08-12
updated: 2026-08-12
image_file: spot_chiang_rai_baandam_museum.jpg
image_source: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Baan_Dum_(Black_House)_-_By_Thawan_Duchanee_-_Chiang_Rai_-_Thailand_-_03_(35262915806).jpg"
image_author: "Adam Jones from Kelowna, BC, Canada"
image_license: "CC BY-SA 2.0"
---

## Overview

Thawan built it over forty years until his death in 2014, mixing Lanna temple forms with a collection of skulls, crocodile skins and buffalo horn — the work is about death and appetite rather than purity, and it unsettles people who arrive expecting a temple. Some of the material was legally obtained decades ago and would not be today, which is worth knowing rather than discovering inside. The main hall is a long wooden building with a table laid in horn.

## Highlights

See it after the White and Blue temples; the three together are one argument in three colours and this is the third voice. Allow an hour and read the labels — much of the collection is Thawan's own sculpture rather than found material. Not everyone will want the animal remains, and there is no way to see the estate without them.