Singapore slings its future to art – and so should we

I’ve just come back from a most enlightening three-day conference organized by the Singapore Art Museum for the ASEAN-COCI Subcommittee on Culture.

I reckon that my being nominated by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) to attend this regional gathering had something to do with my new role as head of its Subcommittee on Art Museums. Now that’s par for the course considering that in international gatherings of this sort, government institutions such as the NCCA always deal with the big picture, and necessarily cast a wide net to select a delegate. But I would certainly be pleasantly surprised if our local arts council was trying to make some sort of statement to its neighbors about the Philippine museum scene by sending a not-so-conventional chap who will – unwittingly if I may add – stick out in a sea of suits and national costumes during the opening day session, as our souvenir group photo will show. Perhaps there was some unspoken ASEAN code about attire that I was missing, seeing I was the only one properly dressed for the gala welcome dinner the previous evening, when everyone else, to my chagrin, opted for casual dress!

With my enthusiasm for sharing the good news about our country – museum-wise – on overdrive, I really looked forward to participating in this "Symposium on Art Museums as Regional Sites of Learning and Creative Platforms for Cross Cultural Understanding and Promotion." For an event with a title of Homeric length, however, not to mention having come this far, I thought that I should at least have been given a longer time on stage to do my own bit for WOW Philippines. I found it to be quite curious, in fact, that the 10 ASEAN delegates (the other 10, including my colleague at the NCCA, Dr. Iris Melliza of the Holy Cross of Davao College, were tasked to prepare table top displays) were only given a maximum of five minutes each to speak about our own educative practices considering that this was supposed to have been an event that was being done, at great cost to ASEAN I would imagine, for our benefit.

So you can understand how surprised we were to find ourselves being gently eased out of the rostrum with a telling smile by the emcee when our time was up. "Thailand" – yes, we called each other by our country names, like pageant contestants – even created a stir, feigning blindness, and then deafness to our host’s friendly reminders. When tapped on the back by the moderator, she simply nodded with a sheepish grin and asked for another minute, then, with a laugh, another minute, and then another sans embarrassment. With so much to show and tell like the rest of us, one could hardly fault the lady for being so persistent!

Making an address in English was difficult for some of the delegates; and so it was thought that listening to their stilted inflections and strained intonations could likewise be taxing on the audience, which was composed entirely, save for one or two, of Singaporean primary and secondary school art teachers, who were all getting time off from work, and paying a not insignificant amount, to attend this event. This was the reason that was given to me by Jean Wee, acting assistant director for programs and curator of the Singapore Art Museum’s Art Education Galleries, for the limit in the speaking time of the delegates. While I most certainly did not feel alluded to, I admit that I was quite taken aback at first by this decision, which seemed to diminish the importance of some of those who could not express themselves clearly. Again, wasn’t trying to understand one another the point of gathering us together in this setting? Then again, I thought, the Singapore Art Museum did have a job to do, and an audience that it regularly engages with to please.

Trust them then, I continued to remind myself, with quintessential pragmatism and in true civil servant fashion, to render upstanding customer service to its stakeholders while trying to recoup costs or even generate revenue from what could have simply been, to us, a prosaic collegial meeting.

The mouthful of a title for this symposium, I thought, should have been enough indication that this event had the potential of biting more than it could chew. The intentions were certainly well-meaning, and the scope of the symposium indeed immense, but I could not help but feel at various instances during those three days that this event was close to teetering into the precipice of tokenism – an impression that cannot be helped in gatherings of this nature, where the task of finding a mutually agreeable and beneficent common ground, particularly when it involves many different cultures, can often be most difficult, if not altogether daunting.

It certainly tested the ability of the Singapore Art Museum to pit its own sense of self as a leading Southeast Asian museum with aspirations of being a player on the international art scene, and as a cog in the wheel of national development – utilizing "art for Singapore’s sake" – with the multifarious, and, might I add, equally progress-centered determination and solipsistic sensibilities of its neighbors.

Save for the hiccup that I mentioned, I was overall satisfied with the way that the Singapore Art Museum met this challenge. One good thing that it had going for it, besides its efficiency in getting people and programs seamlessly from A to B, was the high caliber of the speakers that it was able to identify and attract, all of whom had something new to share to the group.

I particularly remember four of them. Christopher Naylor, hands down the most loquacious of the presenters, spoke about the outfit that he directs in the United Kingdom, engage, which runs programs that harness the exciting learning opportunities provided by art galleries to artists, teachers and students. He showed a sincere interest in finding ways to draw the ASEAN museums to networking with the institutions that he has worked with across Europe.

Gina Panebianco, head of Education and Public Programs at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, which I visited only a few months ago, narrated a moving initiative that she had ongoing at the museum called the Youth Access Project, which sought to endow personal development, visual arts related and employability skills to troubled teenagers in custody.

In terms of impact, Sarah Mossop, who is the Community and Education Manager at Modern Art Oxford, in Oxfordshire, UK, delivered exceedingly well in proposing activities that would make the often difficult terrain of modern and especially contemporary art relevant to teachers and learners alike, referencing the contentious exhibitions and artists her gallery has been presenting. Her narration of how young children were able to safely navigate the cuss-ridden installations of Tracey Emin, or the outlandishly picaresque sculptures and interventions of the Chapman brothers were particularly helpful.

Of course, how could I not mention, as point of pride, our very own Dr. Brenda Fajardo, visual artist and curator, who read a paper entitled "From Inside the Museum to the Community Outside – the Philippine Experience," which focused on bringing a university-based collection to the community outside, as well as bringing the community inside the museum as stakeholders, through two case studies of projects that she has been actively involved in, Hiyasining and Kabuhi sa Bago.

I must also pat Brenda on the back for helping me find a way to sneak around the stricture imposed by our hosts on the length of our presentations. Having been inspired by the resolve of my Thai colleague who had shushed down the emcee just to be given the opportunity to speak at length, I conspired with Brenda to give me a few minutes after her talk to come up on stage once again to let our neighbors know about our Zero-in collaboration through the eye-catching educational kit we created together with the Ayala Museum, Lopez Memorial Museum and Museo Pambata, as well as a 3-D walk-through of my own museum’s Decode new media exhibition, all of which left the audience… well, shall we just say that they needed no further convincing that the Philippines is indeed the region’s art powerhouse.

Pardon the boast, but as this ASEAN symposium in Singapore showed, while we may try to understand and respect what’s around us, we must look at ourselves first and foremost.

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For feedback, e-mail rlerma@ateneo.edu.