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Explore the rich artistic histories of Singapore and Southeast Asia at our reference library and archive, nestled in the historic Supreme Court Wing.
Curatorial Research
Research drives the Gallery’s diverse work to foster a deeper understanding, curiosity, and appreciation of art.
National Gallery Singapore positions Southeast Asian art within a global context while bringing international art to the region. As a collecting institution that collaborates and engages in comparative research in the region, we explore interdisciplinary connections that transcend national boundaries.
By profiling influential artists, the Gallery generates new research and perspectives on artistic practices that made an impact on global art history.
The Gallery creates thought-provoking encounters between artists and the public, focusing on in-depth research into local practices and works in the National Collection.
The Gallery is committed to diversity and inclusivity by prioritising new research into underrepresented fields and engaging with important societal issues through art.
It is not hard to see how art history’s emphasis on visual literacy and critical thinking becomes relevant to an increasingly visual world, and one which requires constant decoding and interpretation, whether in the interest of geo-politics or our commitment to building inclusive societies. More recently, History of Art is also referred to as Histories of Art to reflect the field’s rapidly globalizing and inclusive scope.
Our research
Catching Fire | Forensic Architecture in Conversation with Eugene Tan (2021)
Art and architecture are commonly associated with aesthetics and ideas. But what if they could also be marshalled to shed light on incidents of conflict and harm? Learn more about Eyal Weizman (Director of Forensic Architecture) exploring these questions in conversation with Eugene Tan (Director, National Gallery Singapore and Singapore Art Museum).
The Manifold Roles of Women Artists in Singapore from the 1980s: Panel (2021)
This talk explores how the burgeoning Singapore art scene from the 1980s to 2000s compelled women artists to take on numerous roles on top of their own individual artistic practices, and how narratives of contemporary art in Singapore might recognise these less visible forms of labour and collaborative thinking.
Panel Discussion: Art as Historical Method in Southeast Asia (2023)
How can contemporary art create new ways of understanding the past? This panel explored the turn toward history in Southeast Asian contemporary art practice, how it offers models for the ways in which we understand the past and the work that history can do in the world.
Opening Talk | Dalam Southeast Asia: The Tailors and the Mannequins (2021)
Shabbir Hussain Mustafa, the lead curator of the UOB Southeast Asia Gallery, will open the programme with an introduction. This will be followed by an in-depth discussion with the curator of The Tailors and the Mannequins: Chen Cheng Mei and You Khin, Roger Nelson.
Figuring a Scene | In Dialogue with Patrick Flores and Siddharta Perez (2024)
Curated by Dr. Patrick Flores, Dalam Southeast Asia: Figuring a Scene proposes that exhibitions hold intrinsic significance beyond historical or societal contexts. Emotions, imagination, and sensory experiences take center stage in our understanding of art, defining how we make sense of the world around us.
Material as Method: Kwok Kian Chow in Dialogue with Teo Hui Min (2024)
By drawing upon insights from the exhibition Cheong Soo Pieng: Layer by Layer, this dialogue between Kwok Kian Chow and exhibition curator Teo Hui Min aims to examine the transformative impact of artists and art movements on the interpretation of materiality within the context of modern art in Singapore and Asia in the 1950s.
Latiff Mohidin: An Online Symposium (2020)
Conceived with poet-painter Latiff Mohidin, this event brings together artists, activists and writers who traverse the spheres of Asian philosophy, critical theory and spatial analysis to generate speculative assemblages of liveability in a post-COVID-19 Southeast Asia.
The Modern in Southeast Asian Art: A Reader Symposium | Panel 1 (2023)
One of the key dynamics to emerge from the reader is the lively back-and-forth of textual polemics on art. Focusing on the idea of polemics, speakers share key instances from the reader concerned with opposition and debate within Southeast Asian art writing, as well as its meaning and purpose.
The Modern in Southeast Asian Art: A Reader Symposium | Panel 2 (2023)
What were the languages in which the discourse of Southeast Asian modern art was written? What does this linguistic make-up reveal about the field, and how is it reflected in the kind of terminology and vocabulary that has emerged? Issues of translation within the Reader were discussed in this panel.
Keynote Lecture: Lim Chong Keat on Art and Architecture
In this keynote lecture, entitled “The Sense of Art & Design”, Datuk Seri Lim combines reminiscence and wit to provide an inimitable perspective on the development of art and architecture of Singapore, and what it means to have a sense of beauty and appreciation of art.
Visual Empire: Reproductions & Translations | Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyễn (2022)
In this lecture, Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyễn focuses on the international mobility of Vietnamese photographers during the first quarter of the 20th century and the role photography played in anti-colonial struggles.
Liu Kang Annual Lecture | Musings: The Letters of Liu Haisu and Liu Kang (2019)
Explore Liu Kang’s influences and connections through his letters and correspondences with his lifelong friend and mentor Liu Haisu, and the artists’ beliefs, practices and relationship. This lecture also discusses the wider connections between Singapore artists and the Shanghai literati during this formative period for Singapore art.
The Fourth Liu Kang Annual Lecture | Refracted Images: Art During the Japanese Occupation (2020)
The Liu Kang Annual Lecture is a signature Gallery event, planned in partnership with the Liu Kang family. Each year, the lecture presents new research that spotlights a pivotal period of Singapore’s art history, shedding light on cultural forces and critical moments that have shaped our art. This year’s special three-part edition presents a set of lectures and a panel discussion that explore artmaking during the Japanese Occupation.
The Fifth Liu Kang Annual Lecture | Decoding Nanyang Feng 解码“南洋风” (2022)
In this lecture, join scholar Yeo Mang Thong to explore the charged contexts of post-war Singapore, and trace the lesser-known connections between Nanyang Style and social realism.
The Fifth Liu Kang Annual Lecture | Decoding Nanyang Feng 解码“南洋风” (2022)
In this lecture, join scholar Yeo Mang Thong to explore the charged contexts of post-war Singapore, and trace the lesser-known connections between Nanyang Style and social realism.
The Sixth Liu Kang Annual Lecture | نڬري داڬڠ | 蔚為大觀: Multicosmological Modernity in 1930s Penang (2023)
In this lecture, Dr Simon Soon will contextualise the use of the Geographic Information System (GIS) to produce a cultural map of 1930s George Town, Penang. He will explore Nan Guo’s articles alongside the paintings and activities of two of Penang’s modern artists – Abdullah Ariff and Yong Mun Sen.
Curatorial Roundtable: Suddenly Turning Visible (2020)
Curators of Suddenly Turning Visible: Art and Architecture in Southeast Asia (1969–1989) share their curatorial process and approach in this talk where audience members were invited to enter the sandbox of Raymundo Albano’s “Step on the Sand and Make Footprints” (1974; remade 2019).
Curatorial Roundtable: Something New Must Turn Up (2021)
In this roundtable, curators Cheng Jia Yun, Goh Sze Ying, Lim Shujuan, Joleen Loh, Adele Tan, Teo Hui Min, and Seng Yu Jin (moderator) share their perspective on these questions, as well as insights they have gleaned from curating these exhibitions.
Curatorial Roundtable | Ever Present: First Peoples Art of Australia (2022)
This roundtable discussed the behind-the-scenes aspects of "Ever Present", from conceptualisation and development to its display across Australia and Singapore. They also shared insights into the cultural connections explored between First Nations’ Art from Australia and the art and broader history of Southeast Asia.
Tales That Turn | Curatorial Sharing (2023)
Our curators Cheng Jia Yun, Patrick Flores, Qinyi Lim, Teo Hui Min, Shabbir Hussain Mustafa, and Anissa Rahadiningtyas delved deep into the many words and phrases associated with the mind-bending “tropical.” Together, they explored how it continues to morph and mutate, offering a speculative reading of modern art and its tendencies.
Our research publications
History and Imagination: Modern Photography from Singapore
Available in Print only.
Print edition: $39
History and Imagination: Modern Photography from Singapore
Print edition: $39
The Asian Modern
Available in Print only.
Print edition: $60
The Asian Modern
Print edition: $60
刘抗: 文集新编
Available in Print only.
Print edition: $31
刘抗: 文集新编
Print edition: $31
Liu Kang: Essays on Art and Culture
Available in Print only.
Print edition: $31
Liu Kang: Essays on Art and Culture
Print edition: $31
Realism In Asia: Volume One
Available in Print only.
Print edition: $28
Realism In Asia: Volume One
Print edition: $28
Migration, Transmission, Localisation: Visual Art in Singapore (1886–1945)
Available in Print only.
Print edition: $39
Migration, Transmission, Localisation: Visual Art in Singapore (1886–1945)
Print edition: $39
Unfettered Ink: The Writings of Chen Chong Swee
Available in Print only.
Print edition: $37.45
Unfettered Ink: The Writings of Chen Chong Swee
Print edition: $37.45
Charting Thoughts: Essays on Art in Southeast Asia
Available in Print only.
Print edition: $49
Charting Thoughts: Essays on Art in Southeast Asia
Print edition: $49
The Modern In Southeast Asian Art: A Reader
Available in Print only.
Print edition: $129
The Modern In Southeast Asian Art: A Reader
Print edition: $129
Ambitious Alignments: New Histories of Southeast Asian Art
Available in Print only.
Print edition: $43
Ambitious Alignments: New Histories of Southeast Asian Art
Print edition: $43
I Am An Artist (He Said)
Available in Print only.
Print edition: $39
I Am An Artist (He Said)
Print edition: $39
Our lead curators
The team at the Gallery is helmed by leading researchers and scholars. The individuals listed below are recognised experts in their fields of curating, art history, and education.
Patrick Flores
Chief Curator
Patrick Flores is Chief Curator of National Gallery Singapore. He is the Director of the Philippine Contemporary Art Network. He was a Visiting Fellow at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. in 1999. Among his publications are Painting History: Revisions in Philippine Colonial Art (1999); Past Peripheral: Curation in Southeast Asia (2008); Art After War: 1948-1969 (2015); and Raymundo Albano: Texts (2017). He co-edited The Modern in Southeast Asian Art: A Reader with T. K. Sabapathy (2022). He was a Guest Scholar of the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles in 2014. He was the Artistic Director of Singapore Biennale 2019 and Curator of the Philippine and Taiwan Pavilions at the Venice Biennale in 2015 and 2022.
His work focuses on the art and curatorial history of Southeast Asia and Philippine colonial and modern art history.
Published research
- The Modern in Southeast Asian Art: A Reader (2022), co-editor with Kanaga Sabapathy
- Charting Thoughts: Essays on Art in Southeast Asia (2017), co-editor with Low Sze Wee
- Past Peripheral: Curation in Southeast Asia (2008)
Exhibitions
- Figuring a Scene, 2024
- Elusive Edge: Philippine Abstract Forms, 2023
- Ties of History: Art in Southeast Asia, 2018
Seng Yu Jin
Director (Curatorial, Research and Exhibitions) and Senior Curator
Seng Yu Jin is a Senior Curator at the Gallery. He is currently a lecturer at the National University of Singapore, and previously taught the MA Asian Art Histories and BA Fine Arts programmes at LASALLE College of the Arts.
He is interested in Southeast Asian art histories, and his research focuses on the region’s exhibition histories and artist collectives.
Published research
- Co-author of Singapore Chronicles: Art (2019)
- Co-editor for Histories, Practices, Interventions: A Reader in Singapore Contemporary Art (2016)
Co-curated exhibitions
- Cheong Soo Pieng: Bridging Worlds (2010)
- FX Harsono: Testimonies (2010)
- Singapore Biennale, If the World Changed (2013)
- Awakenings: Art in Society in Asia, 1960s−1990s (2019)
Horikawa Lisa
Director (Curatorial and Collections) and Senior Curator
Horikawa Lisa is Senior Curator and Director (Curatorial & Collections) overseeing the strategic development and enhancement of accessibility for its collections including artwork and archives. She serves as Visiting Professor (Contemporary Art Practice & Visual Culture) of Kanazawa College of Art. Prior to joining the Gallery, she was Curator of Fukuoka Asian Art Museum.
Her current research interest is on comparative examination of intersecting modernisms in Southeast Asia, East Asia and beyond in the first half of 20th century.
Published research
Contributing editor, The Modern in Southeast Asian Asian Art: A Reader (2022)
Chapter contributor, Toward Updating the Concept of “Bijustu (Art)” (2017, in Japanese)
Co-curated exhibitions
Reframing Modernism: Painting from Southeast Asia, Europe and Beyond (2016)
Between Declarations & Dreams: Art of Southeast Asia since the 19th century (2015)
The 3rd and 4th Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale (2005, 2009)
China Dream—Another Flow of Chinese Modern Art (2004)
Phoebe Scott
Senior Curator and Lead Curator for Art in SEA
Phoebe Scott is a Senior Curator and Curator of Research Publications. Phoebe holds a PhD in Art History and Theory from the University of Sydney, on the subject of modern art in Vietnam. She is currently also an Adjunct Lecturer in Art History at the National University of Singapore.
Her research interests include modern art within a global framework; intersections of modernism and colonialism, especially in Indochina; Socialist Realism and post-Socialist art.
Published research
- “Entangled Modernisms: Vietnamese Modern Art and Artists in Paris,” in eds. Natalie Adamson and Richard Taws, The Wiley Blackwell Companion to French Art (forthcoming 2025)
- Co-editor (with Yvonne Low) of “Special Issue: Rethinking Primitivisms in the Modern Art of Southeast Asia” for the journal World Art and author of “Primitivsm and Affiliation: Yeh Chi Wei’s Borneo Images” for the issue (2024).
- Contributing editor for T.K. Sabapathy & Patrick Flores, eds., The Modern in Southeast Asian Art: A Reader (2023).
- “Colonial or Cosmopolitan?: Vietnamese Art in Paris in the 1930s-1940s,” Southeast of Now, 3:2 (October 2019): 187-242.
- Co-editor, with Stephen Whiteman, Sarena Abdullah, and Yvonne Low, Ambitious Alignments: New Histories of Southeast Asian Art, 1945-1990. (2018).
Exhibitions
- Familiar Others: Emiria Sunassa, Eduardo Masferré and Yeh Chi Wei, 1940s-1970s (2022-2023)
- Radiant Material: A Dialogue in Vietnamese Lacquer Painting, National Gallery Singapore, (2017)
Co-curated exhibitions
- City of Others: East and Southeast Asian Artists in Paris, 1920s-40s. (2025)
- Ever Present: First People’s Art of Australia, National Gallery Singapore (2022)
- Reframing Modernism: Painting in Europe, Southeast Asia and Beyond, National Gallery Singapore, (2016)
- Between Declarations and Dreams: Art of Southeast Asia Since the 19th Century, (2015- ongoing)
Adele Tan
Senior Curator and Lead Curator for Art in Singapore
Adele Tan received her PhD in art history from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London and is Senior Curator at National Gallery Singapore. Her research focuses on modern and contemporary art in Southeast Asia and China. She also lectures in Art History at the National University of Singapore. She curated the 2019 annual Ng Teng Fong Roof Garden Commission with artist Charles Lim Yi Yong and the 2023 commission by Mumbai-based artist Shilpa Gupta, and also initiated the Gallery’s site-specific commission series OUTBOUND, which featured Jane Lee, Gary Carsley, Haegue Yang and Yee I-Lann. She recently completed a major retrospective exhibition on the Singapore-born British artist Kim Lim in 2024 and is leading the DBS Singapore Gallery revamp opening in 2025. She is concurrently Assistant Director, Curatorial Programmes at the Gallery.
Exhibitions:
- Between Declarations and Dreams: Art of Southeast Asia Since the 19th Century
- A Fact Has No Appearance: Art Beyond the Object (2016)
- Yayoi Kusama: Life is the Heart of Rainbow (2017)
- Awakenings: Art in Society in Asia (2018)
- OUTBOUND season 1 (2018-2023)
- Ng Teng Fong Roof Garden Commissions # 3 and #6
- Kim Lim: The Space Between. A Retrospective
Published writings
- Between Declarations and Dreams / Chpt 6 Re:Defining Art
- Redza Piyadasa in the 1970s: Cerebral Maneouvres, Cultural Assertions
- Yayoi Kusama’s Late Requiem for the Now
- Rhetorical Postures and the Photographic Condition: A Minor Malaysian Detour
- AU CONTRAIRE—John Lee Joo-For (Malaysia/Australia)
- SUBJECTS AT ODDS: Shilpa Gupta’s Untitled (2023) in four parts
- Planting and imaging precarity in Charles Lim’s SEASTATE 9: proclamation garden
- “Call and Response”: Asia and Kim Lim (co-written with Joleen Loh)
- Retrieving Colour and Culture: Another View into Kim Lim
- Conversation with Teo Eng Seng (2024)
- From political travesties to aesthetic justice: the ugly in Teo Eng Seng's D Cells
Cai Heng
Senior Curator and Lead Curator for Ink
Cai Heng is currently a senior curator and lead curator for ink at the National Gallery Singapore. She is also the principal convenor for the Chinese art module for the NUS’ Art History Minor course.
Cai received a PhD in Art History and Theory from the University of Sydney.
Published research:
- “Tradition unfettered: The story of Singapore ink,” in Siapa Nama Kamu? Art in Singapore Since the 19th Century (2015)
- “Beauty beyond form: The thought and art of Wu Guanzhong” in Wu Guanzhong: Beauty Beyond Form (2015)
- “The Xiu Hai Lou Collection: A Glimpse into the Evolution of Modern Chinese Painting,” in Rediscovering Treasures: Ink Art from the Xiu Hailou Collection (2017)
- “Transnational Development in Georgette Chen’s Early Artistic Practice” in Georgette Chen: At Home in the World (2020)
- Editor and writer for Liu Kuo-Sung: Experimentation As Method monograph (2023).
Exhibitions:
- Liu Kuo-sung: Experimentation as Method (2023-2024)
- Wu Guanzhong: Learning from the Master (2021-2022)
- Art Nurtures Life: Celebrating 100 Years of Wu Guanzhong (2019-2020, Beijing)
- Wu Guanzhong: Expressions of Pen and Palette (2018-2019)
- Rediscovering Treasures: Ink Art from the Xiu Hai Lou Collection (2017).
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