Education and social engineering: Museums in Singapore

Can-Seng Ooi

Associate Professor and DirectorCenter for Leisure & Culture Services

Copenhagen Business School

Agenda

• Setting out the issues

• Examples

• A fledging Occupy Museum moving

The Main Museums in Singapore

• The National Museum of Singapore (NMS)

• The Singapore Art Museum (SAM)

• Asian Civilisations Museum (ACM)

Main museum issues in Singapore

• Political pragmatism• Research

– History and identity• Education

– National education program– Gracious society

• Industry– A Renaissance City– Creative industries

Political pragmatism

• Economic development above ideology

• Citizenship: Rights versus privilege

• Freedom and responsibility

• Identities: Descriptive and normative

Research role of the Asian Civilisations

Museum

• Chinese, Indian, Malay and Others (CMIO) model

• Singaporeans’ ancestral cultures

• Ancient “Asian values”

Official’s hat armchair Huanghuali wood Ming dynasty

Educational role of the NMS

The Singapore Story• Colonial period (1819 – 1945)• Political awakening (1945 – 1955) • Communist threat (1955 – 1961)• Battle for merger (1961 – 1963)• Merger years (1963 – 1965)• From survival to progress

(1965 – present)• Future in our hands (future)

Industry and the Singapore Art

Museum

• 20th Century Southeast Asian visual art

• Move to contemporary art• Move towards

“community participation”• Market definition of value

Occupy Museums

• New anti-CMIO identities

• Contemporary art and its discontents

• Internet, social media and independent art spaces

Thank you for your attention!

• www.ooi.dk• ooi@cbs.dk