National Museum of Singapore: Museum musings

A visit to a museum with one’s grandchildren can be an uplifting experience, as was the one to the National Museum of Singapore

March 28, 2017 11:12 am | Updated July 07, 2017 11:32 am IST

The National Museum of Singapore

The National Museum of Singapore

The genius behind creating and curating exhibitions cannot be measured. Take the way the country of Singapore has been created. It is a gift. It is a secret, I think, like alchemists after gold. The spirit cannot really be analysed, but you feel its glow.

Singapore’s National Museum is not a marketplace of vanities, but a whimsical and vivid manifestation of its culture. A culture that is cosmopolitan, convenient, clean and clear. The haute couture show of ‘the little black dress’, complements the architecture of the building and yet reflects its sleek, symmetrical, slim lines. The sculptural expressiveness of the couture creations are placed in the context of Singapore culture.

The country is, at the moment, encouraging communications through culture, up to what is known as affordable art. It is as if the paintings I saw in my last visit (I have been several times to the National Musuem) are in dialogue with artists in other countries, like India, where the Lalit Kala Academi of art, was set up by the then education minister, Maulana Azad, from Prime Minister Nehru’s first cabinet. Azad wanted every citizen to have a chance to paint and display it. He said, “there is no education without refinement of the emotions.”.

There was a nostalgic spirit too, I noticed, as if fragrances emerged from a past era to engulf the soul. There was an old Singer Hand machine for sewing on display once, the soul feels better for seeing it displayed this way.

There was a quality of design and the highest level of execution. There was mystery and charming beauty, a kind of celebration. Art is the best charm of living in Singapore, if you go beyond the material; one appreciates the complexities mastered to present exhibitions of this calibre.

On every picnic-like visit that we made on Friday afternoons, taking our grandchildren, by public transportation (mainly bus and the shuttle bus in the university for the NUS Museum), we were all refreshed. The children were also exposed to the diversity and excellence of art, to traditional craft skills as against shopping malls and disposable crafts. The children were enthralled by it all, enchanted by the drawings (some they called ugly!) and the old wooden beams of the Malaysian timber and broken beds. They were also carried away by the play of colour and light and marvelled at this different vision of Singapore.

The magic of it all is rooted in an accent on greater refinement, to indicate that peace could succeed in enhancing beauty and life. To seek harmony through just a collection of lines, and natural curves.

The majesty of the shows, is as if they are summoning us to show the heights that Singapore can reach.

We each have our own fantasies, of what is beautiful and meaningful and exotic for us. It can mean different things to different people: for me it is having the time and leisure, to do my own thing. Sharing joyful times and humor, and laughing over things with my parents and husband and grandchildren. So I empathized with the joy of the artist, or whatever emotion allowed him to display his thoughts.

We rejoiced with the National Museum that they allowed us to feel good about life and about the beautiful mosaic, yet unique, culture of Singapore.

The oldest one

The first art museum in the world is the Ashmolean Museum in the UK. Set up in 1677, it received its first collection, the cabinet of curiosities from Elias Ashmole

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