It is worth mentioning Kwok Kian Chow, Channels and Confluences: A History of Singapore Art (Singapore: Singapore Art Museum, 1996). Channels and Confluences was published on the occasion of the opening of the Singapore Art Museum, and has been instrumental as an introductory text for scholars and students seeking a survey of Singapore art. Another text that has received lesser attention is Past, Present, Beyond: Re-nascence of an Art Collection, edited by T.K. Sabapathy (Singapore: NUS Museums, 2002). It contains essays by Gauri Parimoo Krishnan, Constance Sheares, Roxana M. Brown and T.K. Sabapathy on aspects of the National University of Singapore’s collection that range from classical Indian sculptures to Chinese and Southeast Asian ceramics to textiles and modern Southeast Asian art. The volume is significant not only because it highlights the many facets of an early institutional art collection in Singapore, but the manner in which art historical scholarship in Southeast Asia and Singapore is heavily mediated through what we differentiate today as “ethnographic” and “modern art” objects. The National University of Singapore Museum continues to negotiate this tension in its exhibitionary work to the present day. This is somewhat in contrast to the history of the national collection held by the National Heritage Board that has since the 1990s developed “specialised” museums such as the National Museum of Singapore, Asian Civilisations Museums, and even the National Gallery Singapore and Singapore Art Museum. These museums trace their origins to the Raffles Museum and Library as the primary source from which their collections were drawn. The Raffles Museum was an encyclopaedic museum, set up by the British in the 19th century, and operated within a much larger remit of advancing colonial science through the accumulation of ethnographic objects and natural history specimens. The natural history collection is now overseen by the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum (established in 2014, and formerly the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research) at the National University of Singapore. For more details, see Gretchen Liu, One Hundred Years of the National Museum: Singapore 1887–1987 (Singapore: The Museum, 1987); Asian Civilisations Museum, Hunters & Collectors: The Origins of the Southeast Asian Collection at the Asian Civilisations Museum, exh. cat. (Singapore: Asian Civilisations Museum, 2009); Kevin Y.L. Tan, “The National Museum as Maker and Keeper of Singapore History,” in The Makers and Keepers of Singapore History, eds. Loh Kah Seng & Liew Kai Khiun (Singapore: Ethos Books, 2010), 122–36. 

One text in particular is the 2011 Third Text special issue co-edited by Joan Kee and Patrick Flores titled Contemporaneity and Art in Southeast Asia. In the introduction, Kee begins by observing that the 1990s marked a significant turning point in debates about art from the “other” regions. She observes that in the decade, debates flourished across Asia and with(in) Euro-America, which brought artists from diverse localities together in a radically different manner. Kee tracks both institutional and historical debates about how one may capture this shift, this apparent “contemporary moment” and plausible state of “postmodernity.” She cautions against the casual use of the term “postmodernity” and even the term “contemporary,” for it means almost everything and nothing simultaneously, a notion that is quite critical to Siapa Nama Kamu? as well. Kee also discusses a conversation between Flores and herself as they set about establishing the parameters of this special issue during the initial call for papers. They both agreed to avoid the term “contemporary” in favor of the term “contemporaneity.” Flores is thereafter quoted:
“As a condition, an epoch, a paradigm and even as a placeholder replacing the similarly contested notion of postmodernity, contemporaneity forces artists and writers to rethink what they perceive as the present as never before.” See Joan Kee, “Introduction Contemporary Southeast Asian Art,” in Third Text: Contemporaneity and Art in Southeast Asia 25, no. 4 (2011): 371.

Constance Sheares, interview with Shabbir Hussain Mustafa, 18 August 2014. This is further verified in National Museum Art Gallery Official Opening 21 August 76, exh. cat. (Singapore: National Museum Art Gallery, 1976), unpaginated. “The National Museum Art Gallery has a modest, and the nucleus of a, permanent collection comprising 115 paintings donated by the late Dato Loke Wan Tho in between 1962 and 1965 (excluding the 12 paintings found missing in 1973, before the period of the present administration of the museum), a total of 45 oil or portraiture paintings of the former Governors of Singapore and other historical personalities (including a portraiture painting of Sir Frank Swettenham by the English painter John Singer Sargent, a portraiture painting of Sir Shenton Thomas by the Chinese painter Hsu Pei-Hung [Xu Beihong] and a copy of the portrait of Sir Stamford Raffles by G.F. Joseph in the National Portrait Gallery in London) and the small number of 29 paintings and 4 sculptures by Singapore, Malaysian, Indonesian and other artists.

Other members of the selection committee comprised Lim Ching Teong, Deputy Secretary, Ministry of Culture and Koh Boon Piang, Head of the Art Unit, Ministry of Education. See Constance Sheares, “Art 76 Inaugural Exhibition,” in National Museum Art Gallery Official Opening 21 August 76, unpaginated.

Ibid.

Constance Sheares, interview with Shabbir Hussain Mustafa, 18 August 2014.

With regard to more specific details about the NMAG, it was reported in The Straits Times as follows:
“The first phase of Singapore’s project to establish a Regional Art Centre at the National Museum premises has been completed. This involved the renovation of part of the museum to house artworks from Southeast Asia [...] A maximum of 300 works of art can be displayed in the gallery […] According to the PWD [Public Works Department], there will also be a well-equipped painting store with temperature and humidity control, centrally accessible stacks and easy-to-refer cataloguing and filing systems.” See “Art Centre: First Phase Completed,” The Straits Times, 19 June 1975, 27.

This sketch was discovered by Marcus Langdon while researching on the history of Penang at The National Archives, Kew, United Kingdom. See Marcus Langdon and Kwa Chong Guan, “Notes on ‘Sketch of the Land round Singapore Harbour, 7 February 1819,’” Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 83, no. 1 (2010): 1–7.

Kevin Chua, “The Tiger and the Theodolite: George Coleman’s Dream of Extinction,” in Regional Animalities: Cultures, Humans and Animals in South East Asia, ed. Lucy Davis (Singapore: focas Forum
on Contemporary Art & Society, 2007), 142. 

Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Object (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), xxxix.

Liu Kang, “Trip to Bali,” in Liu Kang: Essays on Art and Culture, ed. Sara Siew (Singapore: The National Art Gallery, Singapore, 2011), 58–9.

Ho Ho Ying, preface to Modern Art, exh. cat. (Singapore: Modern Art Society, 1963), unpaginated.

Brian O’Doherty, “Gallery as Gesture,” in Thinking about Exhibitions, eds. Bruce W. Ferguson, Reesa Greenberg & Sandy Nairne (London: Routledge, 1996), 330.

Constance Sheares, interview with Shabbir Hussain Mustafa, 18 August 2014.

“Tang zeros in on our earth marks,” The Straits Times, 5 April 1980, 5.

For a brief discussion about the circumstances surrounding Halimah Binti Abdullah’s death and the Malaya Pavilion at the British Empire Exhibition 1924–1925, see Shabbir Hussain Mustafa, “Camping and Tramping through the Colonial Archive,” in Camping and Tramping through the Colonial Archive: The Museum in Malaya, eds. Shabbir Hussain Mustafa & Tan Li-Jen (Singapore: NUS Museum, 2011), 32–6.