Through this blog, I intend to share my experiences and the skills I learned whilst being attached to the NUS Museum. I will include my tasks during the course of my attachment and more. I was able to experience many things over the period of this WOW! program, including visits to several other museums in Singapore such as the Asian Civilisation Museum and the NUS Baba House. I also got to work on the cataloguing of the NUS Museum Resource Library. I learned a variety of valuable skills such as perseverance, hard work, artwork analysis and research skills.

The two main tasks assigned to us are: Creating a gallery guide from scratch and cataloguing the resource library. For the creation of the Gallery Guide, the aim of such a task was to compile a series of quotes into a guide for visitors to be able to understand the different perspectives of the various artworks in the exhibition. On the other hand, the aim of cataloguing the resource library was to create an easily accessible classified table containing all the books, catalogues, magazines, etc. that the resource library contained.

The cataloguing of the library involves a long-term aim of the museum’s management team to eventually put out this catalogue to the public through their website so that it can be easily accessed by students and others who may require the resources from the library for research and projects. At the point I joined the project, the status of the project was halfway done by the NUS interns. In order to catalogue all the books, we took down each book from the shelves and recorded key information (title, author/editor, publisher, year of publication, place of publication, language of publication, country/region and category) in an excel sheet.

Creating the gallery guide was a, generally, new experience. The gallery guide serves a way to add more content to the exhibition by provoking the thoughts of visitors. A gallery guide is a compilation of quotes with relevance to the artworks that we were to select and an overarching theme of choice.

I picked five artworks that, to me, represented the various races in Singapore and the notion of community. The five artworks are: “The May 13th Incident” by Choo Keng Kwang, “Dance” by Chen Wen Hsi, “Ini Pulau Melebih (This Island is Too Much)” by Rafaat Hamzah, “A Thin Green Line” by Erika Tan and “Let’s Chat” by Amanda Heng. In my opinion, the artworks allowed me to research into the various different challenges that all the various races faced in the time when the artwork was created. For instance, with “The May 13th Incident” by Choo Keng Kwang, I looked into the challenges that the Chinese students faced with respect to the National Service Ordinance in the 1950s and the rise of Communism within their student community. With “Dance” by Chen Wen Hsi, I explored the challenges that the Indian community faced with their different languages and their struggle to be a homogenous community. I managed to research more on the various social issues that the modern Malay community faced with respect to “Ini Pulau Melebih (This Island is Too Much)” by Rafaat Hamzah. With “A Thin Green Line” by Erika Tan, I was able to look more into the topic of racial divisions and colonial settlers’ impressions of the various racial groups in colonial Singapore. Lastly, I discussed the notion of community and the romanticized kampong spirit with the topics that Amanda Heng’s “Let’s Chat”.

I find the process of creating a gallery guide extremely enriching and helpful for future use. Our task was broken into several steps. Beginning with choosing the five artworks that interest us, articulating the reason behind our choice – for the first week, we were tasked to look through the exhibition, ‘Radio Malaya: Abridged Conversations about Art’ to choose pieces in the exhibition to include in our gallery guide. We had to pick out 5 artworks that interested us and to write about why they seemed interesting and appealing to us, looking into certain aspects of Singapore’s history that may be related to the artwork. Next, we conducted research on the artists and the historical significance/relevance to Singapore’s history with respect to our main theme – we were tasked with the preliminary research into our chosen pieces. We explored the historical context and messages behind the chosen pieces. To do this, we went to the National Library to conduct research using books and journals to find out more about Singapore’s history during the period of time when the piece was created. We had to pick our related quotes from these sources found in the library or online to be paired with the art pieces in the gallery guide, and to give the reader a perspective on our point of view of the exhibition and guide them through a similar thought process. Lastly, we ended the process by selecting relevant quotes, organising the information and formatting the gallery guide.

With respect to our progress with the gallery guide, our mentor would hold progress meetings with us every Friday afternoon to check on our work and guide us towards the next step. During the meetings, I was given feedback on how to improve and what I should do next. On the first meeting, I was told to find out more about the CMIO policy in Singapore and its relation to different policies. I was recommended to look at S. Rajaratnam’s play “Radio Malaya” for sources regarding racial issues. I was also told to start compiling sources, and to look at more newspapers, academic papers, journals, etc. and to start deciding on the sequence in which the five artworks will be arranged in the gallery guide. One challenge that I faced during this week of the process was the relevance of one of the artworks, that I chose, to my theme of “Community” – that piece was “Landscape in Blue” by Ng Yak Whee. On the next meeting, I was told to look for more sources to ensure that all the various perspectives on this issue were covered. I was unable to attend the last progress meeting as I was on medical leave.

The main challenge that I faced with the gallery guide was meeting the expectations of my mentor and ensuring that the perspectives that I present are lucid and easily understandable. This academic journey has been challenging and it represented a test of my abilities and mental strength. I had to persevere and it has taught me to be more patient and thorough. I learned that the vision I have in my head has to be articulated clearly in order for someone else to see it as clearly as I do. I cannot assume that people think the way I do and I must view the issue from various perspectives to ensure clarity.

Through this blog, I intend to share my experiences and the skills I learned whilst being attached to the NUS Museum. I will include my tasks during the course of my attachment and more. I was able to experience many things over the period of this WOW! program, including visits to several other museums in Singapore such as the Asian Civilisation Museum and the NUS Baba House. I also got to work on the cataloguing of the NUS Museum Resource Library. I learned a variety of valuable skills such as perseverance, hard work, artwork analysis and research skills.

The two main tasks assigned to us are: Creating a gallery guide from scratch and cataloguing the resource library. For the creation of the Gallery Guide, the aim of such a task was to compile a series of quotes into a guide for visitors to be able to understand the different perspectives of the various artworks in the exhibition. On the other hand, the aim of cataloguing the resource library was to create an easily accessible classified table containing all the books, catalogues, magazines, etc. that the resource library contained.

The cataloguing of the library involves a long-term aim of the museum’s management team to eventually put out this catalogue to the public through their website so that it can be easily accessed by students and others who may require the resources from the library for research and projects. At the point I joined the project, the status of the project was halfway done by the NUS interns. In order to catalogue all the books, we took down each book from the shelves and recorded key information (title, author/editor, publisher, year of publication, place of publication, language of publication, country/region and category) in an excel sheet.

Creating the gallery guide was a, generally, new experience. The gallery guide serves a way to add more content to the exhibition by provoking the thoughts of visitors. A gallery guide is a compilation of quotes with relevance to the artworks that we were to select and an overarching theme of choice.

I picked five artworks that, to me, represented the various races in Singapore and the notion of community. The five artworks are: “The May 13th Incident” by Choo Keng Kwang, “Dance” by Chen Wen Hsi, “Ini Pulau Melebih (This Island is Too Much)” by Rafaat Hamzah, “A Thin Green Line” by Erika Tan and “Let’s Chat” by Amanda Heng. In my opinion, the artworks allowed me to research into the various different challenges that all the various races faced in the time when the artwork was created. For instance, with “The May 13th Incident” by Choo Keng Kwang, I looked into the challenges that the Chinese students faced with respect to the National Service Ordinance in the 1950s and the rise of Communism within their student community. With “Dance” by Chen Wen Hsi, I explored the challenges that the Indian community faced with their different languages and their struggle to be a homogenous community. I managed to research more on the various social issues that the modern Malay community faced with respect to “Ini Pulau Melebih (This Island is Too Much)” by Rafaat Hamzah. With “A Thin Green Line” by Erika Tan, I was able to look more into the topic of racial divisions and colonial settlers’ impressions of the various racial groups in colonial Singapore. Lastly, I discussed the notion of community and the romanticized kampong spirit with the topics that Amanda Heng’s “Let’s Chat”.

I find the process of creating a gallery guide extremely enriching and helpful for future use. Our task was broken into several steps. Beginning with choosing the five artworks that interest us, articulating the reason behind our choice – for the first week, we were tasked to look through the exhibition, ‘Radio Malaya: Abridged Conversations about Art’ to choose pieces in the exhibition to include in our gallery guide. We had to pick out 5 artworks that interested us and to write about why they seemed interesting and appealing to us, looking into certain aspects of Singapore’s history that may be related to the artwork. Next, we conducted research on the artists and the historical significance/relevance to Singapore’s history with respect to our main theme – we were tasked with the preliminary research into our chosen pieces. We explored the historical context and messages behind the chosen pieces. To do this, we went to the National Library to conduct research using books and journals to find out more about Singapore’s history during the period of time when the piece was created. We had to pick our related quotes from these sources found in the library or online to be paired with the art pieces in the gallery guide, and to give the reader a perspective on our point of view of the exhibition and guide them through a similar thought process. Lastly, we ended the process by selecting relevant quotes, organising the information and formatting the gallery guide.

With respect to our progress with the gallery guide, our mentor would hold progress meetings with us every Friday afternoon to check on our work and guide us towards the next step. During the meetings, I was given feedback on how to improve and what I should do next. On the first meeting, I was told to find out more about the CMIO policy in Singapore and its relation to different policies. I was recommended to look at S. Rajaratnam’s play “Radio Malaya” for sources regarding racial issues. I was also told to start compiling sources, and to look at more newspapers, academic papers, journals, etc. and to start deciding on the sequence in which the five artworks will be arranged in the gallery guide. One challenge that I faced during this week of the process was the relevance of one of the artworks, that I chose, to my theme of “Community” – that piece was “Landscape in Blue” by Ng Yak Whee. On the next meeting, I was told to look for more sources to ensure that all the various perspectives on this issue were covered. I was unable to attend the last progress meeting as I was on medical leave.

The main challenge that I faced with the gallery guide was meeting the expectations of my mentor and ensuring that the perspectives that I present are lucid and easily understandable. This academic journey has been challenging and it represented a test of my abilities and mental strength. I had to persevere and it has taught me to be more patient and thorough. I learned that the vision I have in my head has to be articulated clearly in order for someone else to see it as clearly as I do. I cannot assume that people think the way I do and I must view the issue from various perspectives to ensure clarity.