Singapore’s New Museum: The Largest Public Collection of South East Asian Art

Ten years in the making and debuting just a couple months after Singapore's 50th anniversary as a independent city-state, the National Gallery is situated in the center of the city inside of two retrofitted British colonial-era buildings, one an old Supreme Court building, the other an old City Hall building, to create a contemporary space with a deep historical grounding in national monuments. It's the first ever museum dedicated to South East Asian art. With a bridge that connects the two separate buildings, the space amasses to 689,000 square feet. The museum project took over $350 million dollars to be realized and is part of Singapore’s macro vision to be a leading cultural hub in Asia.

The museum has an extensive collection of over 8,000 pieces, which is the largest public collection in the world of South East Asian art from the 19th and 20th century. The inaugural exhibition Between Declaration and Dreams: Art of South East Asia Since the 19th Century, showcases a breadth of work from artists such as Fernando Amorsolo, Imelda Cajipe-Anday, and Juan Luna of the Philippines, Raden Saleh of Indonesia, and Wu Guanzhong of China.

The museum plans to co-curate with international museum powerhouses to great a wider context for exhibitions. According to BBC, the National Gallery plans to collaborate with the Centre Pompidou in Paris for a show on Modernism and in October, the gallery plans to work with the Tate Britain in London to display an exhibition on the narrative of the British Empire.

In an interview with CNN, the museum’s director, Eugene Tan, stressed that he thought, “the public will be surprised to see the depth, the richness and diversity of art that has been produced in the region."

In The Bold New Voices of Singapore, the second episode of The Creators Project's global documentary series, Art World, we travel to Art Stage Singapore to check out the island city-state looking to take charge of a growing global marketplace:

To learn more about this new national museum click here.

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