Singapore Government Press Release
Media Division, Ministry of Information and The Arts,
MITA Building, 140 Hill Street, 2^nd Storey, Singapore 179369
Tel: 837-9666

Distinguished guests, ladies and gentleman

First of all, I would like to acknowledge the presence tonight of family members of the late Huang Yao. I would like to thank them, and especially Ms Carolyn Wong, for their magnificent and generous gift of 110 works by the late artist to the Singapore Art museum. This is one of the largest, single donations of artworks to the museum, and it gives me great pleasure to accept it on behalf of the Museum.

Huang Yao was an unusual and multi-talented artist. As you have heard, he was not only a cartoonist, painter and calligrapher, he was also a scholar, journalist and educator. Indeed, his art is special because it combines his experiences as a member of the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia and his variegated interests in Chinese literature, philosophy, calligraphy and art.

Huang Yao had also contributed to scholarship in both the artistic and literary fields with his publication titled Xinma huaren zhi or "The History of the Chinese in Singapore and Malaysia". This publication details a record of the customs, traditions and practices of both overseas and native Southeast Asian Chinese and has remained an important source of documentation of the life of the Chinese in this region.

We are indeed privileged that the public can now see his art. Over the years, the Singapore Art Museum has been fortunate to receive the occasional donation from artists, collectors, and the families and estates of artists. These have added depth to its permanent collection, and contributed to its cultural research and heritage programs.

But perhaps the most important contribution by Huang Yao lies in his spirit of innovation, as exemplified in his calligraphic paintings and backhanded calligraphy.

This is the same spirit that we want to promote in the Arts in Singapore. For example, visual art projects in our schools have moved beyond just painting and sculpture to other forms of artistic expressions. And the biennial Nokia Arts Festival, which will be held again later this year, has grown steadily through the years to include more multi-media art forms and installations. Singapore artists have also featured for the first time, and been well accepted, in the Venice Biennale, arguably the grandest and most important of international visual arts.

The development of the Arts is a priority for Singapore. Although we may now be facing a slower period of economic growth, arts development is essential for us in the next stage of our development as we aspire to become a global and cosmopolitan society. It gives our lives balance and adds depth to our thinking and perspectives. And it enables us to sustain our efforts in economic development by putting these in the larger context of human progress.

We will therefore continue to invest in the development of our artists, and our audiences. But how much progress we make, and how quickly we do this, depends on the support and response from the public. Not everyone will have art to donate. But each one of us can contribute in other ways, not least of all in giving our support and encouragement to our local artists, and taking an active interest in the arts.

Your presence at this event tonight adds to the growing buzz in the world of visual arts. In this exhibition, 80 of Huang Yao’s works are on display, of which 60 are works that have been donated to the Singapore Art Museum. These works have been carefully selected to represent the artist’s broad range of artistic styles, mediums and development, to provide an insight into the power of his art.

I thank you all for joining us here at this opening and hope that you will enjoy the show and tell your friends about it. I now declare this exhibition open.