Last Day at NHB

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.