Today was my last day working for the National Heritage Board, a government agency that manages national museums in Singapore.
It has been a fun year, constantly meeting new people from all walks and working on a range of initiatives. I’m especially thankful to be able to see what goes on behind-the-scene and get acquainted with the folks – curators, conservators, directors, programming teams, facilities managers and all other people – that make museums happen.
I was already a museum geek before I joined NHB but the important roles museums play are even more certain for me now. So I’d like to take a page out of critic Lee Wengchoy’s book for an observation – that Singapore ought to beef up the museums’ curatorial muscle, be it art or anthropology.
Accessibility and acknowledgment are important but it’s also my thought that we spend comparatively not enough on educating and cultivating museums’ “meat.” Good marketing makes for the sizzle but it is the steak that feeds.
Fortunately there’s a fair bit of exciting things to look forward to – thanks to the establishment of institutions such as the National Art Gallery and international exchanges such as ones between the Peranakan Museum and France’s Musée Guimet. Now that the hardware (structure) is in place, it really is about the software (content). To use a crude analogy, we shouldn’t have a(nother) cultural equivalent of ION Orchard – spectacular exterior architecture but with the same Prada and Zara stores.
* * *
I am taking a break from work for a while and will see what is out there. And I now have the time for some overdue light reading. Auf Wiedersehen.
Okie, Stephie and Dottie, this is way-er overdue. Here are a couple of photos taken at the two parties that tied me down at work – a private Halloween’s event at the MINT Museum of Toys and a late night party at the Singapore Art Museum. The two parties ran a week apart, both on a Saturday night, and they were gooooood.
* * * :: Halloween’s at MINT Museum ::
Dottie, Me, Stephie, Matt
Shermeen came as Minnie Mouse! And Strawberry Nabilah brought along two Macs. [click to continue…]
When I read that Claude Lévi-Strauss had passed on, I dutifully posted the news on both my Facebook and Twitter accounts. I received one response on Twitter:
I didn’t receive any comments or “likes” (very odd I’d say, to “like” the passing of Lévi-Strauss) on Facebook. However something transpired over the next day that made me post the question “Are Asians hug-deficient?” The responses came swift and steadily:
Two things to note. Firstly, Asians are evidently indeed hug-deficient and it seems we should do something about that, maybe hold free hugs days or perhaps charge money for each hug. In any case the need is there, simmering beneath our polite Asian surfaces and serf-faces. As Lévi-Strauss’ fellow Frenchman and contemporary the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan would have it, there buried in all the resounding “YES!” resides the erupting of the traumatic Real when Ejin Tan irrepressibly puts it “hug me.”
Secondly, as the father of modern anthropology and a central figure in humanities, social studies and philosophy I trust that Lévi-Strauss would have something to say about Asians needing hugs but only expressing it on Facebook. The late gentleman might also have something to say about the scoreboard:
Death of Lévi-Strauss – 0 Comments, 1 Tweet
Asian Hug-deficiency – 2 Likes, 8 Comments
Actually don’t. I’m just kidding. It’s been about two weeks since the Mid-Autumn Festival party at Hua Song Museum and I’m happy to say that everyone had a good time. Overheard: “Mmm… mooncakes…”
With happy guests I’m confident of positive publicity for the museum and for whichever museum I promote for that matter. I do wonder, though, in today’s age of super-speed twitting what will pop-up whenever I do a search for blog entries and image postings. It is part and parcel of my work to constantly keep myself updated of whatever floats up in cyberspace but I want to try something new. Rather than uploading a few choice picks after trawling through whatever I find relevant about my Mid-Autumn’s party, I’m putting up hyperlinks to ‘live’ searches for the name “Hua Song Museum” – the venue of the festive event.
A play on Google’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” button, these links will give you the latest hits on the three currently most pertinent social media channels:
There are some really decent photographs in some of the guests’ Facebook albums and a fair bit of blog chatter and tweets too so have fun surfing. Mmm… mooncakes…
There are several myths about the origin of the Mid-Autumn Festival, also known as the Mooncake or Lantern Festival. Whether you think the Festival commemorates the overthrowing of the Mongol rulers of the Tang Dynasty or romanticizes about the goddess Chang’e and her lover Houyi the Archer, the nocturnal celebratory mood is a good excuse to party.
As part of my youth outreach project, I am organizing a Mid-Autumn private party at Hua Song Museum. The museum is a center that documents the Chinese diaspora, migration and cultures worldwide, so it’s an apt place to gather some friends and down mooncakes with brews of Chinese teas. Feeling refined on a Friday night is a good way to start the weekend.
Invitation design by yours truly. Somehow I felt the need to go all NASA on a decidedly Asian festival.
I first heard Metric’s ‘Gold Guns Girls’ on Entourage. And then I found out Mike Shinoda did a remix, for use as the soundtrack for his art exhibition Glorious Excess (DIES). Matching choice since ‘Gold Guns Girls’ is about our disappointment with everything material while the exhibition is about the excesses of celebrity culture and media.
‘Glorious Excess (DIES)’ is running from August 29 to October 4 at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. So I dug some more and discovered his short film for ‘Glorious Excess.’ The film also gives insight as to how Shinoda works in creating the paintings and artworks.
All the gold and the guns in the world
Couldn’t get you off
All the gold and the guns and the girls
Couldn’t get you off
All the boys, all the choices in the world
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