Mr Kwok Kian Chow
Director, The National Art Gallery, Singapore

Please give us an update on what’s happening at the Gallery right now.
Since we broke ground in January, we have been monitoring the construction to ensure that the historical buildings that will house the Gallery are well taken care of in the midst of all that drilling and pilling.  Later this week, NHB and the Institute of Policy Studies are jointly organising a public forum on art museum and modernity in Southeast Asia.  This will help initiate the Gallery as a civic space for a strong public participation and ownership. There will also be speakers from Southeast Asia, Sydney, Amsterdam, Oxford and Lima to help provide international perspectives on the historic significance of the Gallery which will open in 2015.

What are your hopes for the Gallery?
The Gallery will be the largest museum in this part of the world, and the largest civic space of cultural and social orientation in Singapore.  Apart from its pioneering work in Southeast Asian art history which will form a significant part of the emerging multiple perspectives in global culture, the Gallery is only completed by the participation of the community at large, as I believe the sources of culture and aesthetics come organically from the everyday living.  The Gallery serves as a place of interactions, discussions and resource.  It is also a place we identify ourselves through convergences of expressions, in multiple relations to global and regional cultures.

Mr Kwok Kian Chow, Director of the National Art Gallery Singapore, was previously the founding Director of the Singapore Art Museum. An influential voice in the art museum sector in Asia, he helped initiate the Asian Art Museum Directors’ Forum (AAMDF). As a Board Member of the International Committee of ICOM for Museums and Collections of Modern Art, he played a key role in organising the CIMAM Annual Conference, ‘Common Grounds for Museums in Global Society’ in Shanghai in 2010.

Kwok worked for ten years in community development before joining the National Museum Singapore as a Senior Curator. An active member of many public art and academic boards and committees including the Sculpture Square, UOB Group Art Committee, Kolkata Museum of Modern Art (India), China Art Foundation (London), Singapore Press Holdings Chinese Newspapers and also chairing the Art Advisory Panel of the Land Transport Authority, Kwok’s publications in Chinese and English include two monographs and numerous essays on museology and art history of Southeast Asia, China and Singapore. Kwok was awarded the Public Administration Silver Medal by Singapore in 2003, Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by France in 2002 and Officier of the Order in 2009.