| A taste
for fine art and culture |
| |
An ardent interest in Singapore’s
burgeoning cultural industry was what
inspired Ahmad Mashadi to join the
Singapore Art Museum (SAM) as a curator in 1993.
“It was an exciting period with the formation
of then MITA (Ministry of Information and the
Arts) a few years earlier in 1990. It seemed that
possibilities were tremendous. The museum’s
focus on Southeast Asia promised great
prospects,” Ahmad enthused.
Fresh from the National University of
Singapore, Ahmad and two other curators
immersed themselves in the Southeast Asian art
scene, eager to build up their knowledge and
the museum’s collection of artworks.
“We were very new, but very keen to learn the
ropes. We started to read and travel extensively
across Southeast Asia. I eventually began to
specialise in Philippines as well as Malaysian art,”
said the Senior Curator.
Much to their credit, SAM’s permanent
collection grew from under 2,000 pieces to its
current size of 6,500-plus artworks, making it the
largest collection of 20th-century Southeast Asian
art by a public institution internationally. Today,
SAM is also renowned for its well-executed
exhibitions and community outreach programmes.
Over the years, Ahmad has been involved in many
exhibitions. Recent projects include Vision and
Enchantment: Southeast Asian Paintings (2000),
President’s Young Talents (2001), Singapore’s
participation in the Venice Biennale (2001) and
the Sao Paolo Biennale (2004), and Seni: Art and
the Contemporary (2004).
He has just completed a major project —
Cubism in Asia: Unbounded Dialogues — that
opened in Tokyo in August 2005. This exhibition
will travel to Singapore in February next year.
“Each exhibition offers its own challenges,”
said Ahmad. “A major challenge is bringing into
an exhibition a good level of scholarship. There
are other demands as well, for example, the
audience is becoming more and more critical.”
Another key challenge is finding ways to
make the aesthetic museum experience a
meaningful, educational one as well.
He explained: “You can’t demand that the
audience ‘learn’, but rather allow structured learning
to take place according to natural behaviour and
perhaps the expectations of the audience. This is
something that we are learning to do all the time.”
Looking beyond SAM, Ahmad wants to see all
eight members of the National Heritage Board
family (three museums, four institutions and one
subsidiary) working together to preserve and
present Singapore’s rich heritage.
He said: “Although each museum engages
with differing types of knowledge, there is
tremendous amount of room for us to work
collaboratively to achieve common aims."
“A lot needs to be done to show that as
museums, we can collectively offer a coherent
experience of Singapore and Asian cultures.”
Ahmad went on to cite the annual Singapore
HeritageFest as a successful joint effort that
provides “an excellent opportunity for NHB to
position itself nationally and internationally”.
Not many officers can claim to be in the same
job for more than 10 years. Even fewer are in
their first job. But for Ahmad, his passion for
fine arts and culture remains his strongest
motivation over the years.
Ask him what he finds most interesting about
his work and he will tell you: “It is the basics —
looking at artworks and paintings, thinking about
the ideas behind them and enjoying the experience.”
Sharing what makes him so certain SAM is the
best place to pursue his passion, he said: “With the
largest known collection of modern and contemporary
Southeast Asian art, SAM is the curator’s
version of Toys ‘R’ Us. Imagine the possibilities!” |
