Life Power List 2024: Eugene Tan’s roles in SAM, National Gallery Singapore come with a lot of clout

SINGAPORE – The suave Eugene Tan, 52, is a regular on arts power lists – not just in Singapore, but also globally.

In 2024, the world’s leading international contemporary art magazine Art Review ranked him 24th on its ardently watched “Power 100”, an indicator that he is one of the most influential people right now deciding the sort of art that gets made and seen.

The continued rise in the ranks – he was 29th in 2023 – comes as he was promoted to double-hat as chief executive of both the National Gallery Singapore and the Singapore Art Museum (SAM) after Ms Chong Siak Ching stepped down in April.

He was already director of both institutions, and still holds both positions.

He has also been handed Ms Chong’s other portfolio as head of the Visual Arts Cluster, comprising the two museums and STPI – Creative Workshop & Gallery, which focuses more on the mediums of print and paper.

Over lunch, Dr Tan is keen to set the record straight.

In the art world, he says, it is not unusual for a person to be both chief executive and director of a museum; financial and curatorial decisions are intrinsically linked in galleries.

What is less common, however, is that a single person would be appointed to take on this mantle in two cornerstone national institutions. “It was a strategic decision to harness the synergies of both organisations,” he says. “To bring them closer and make sure they collaborate, but, at the same time, give them distinct identities.”

For the doubters, a major test he applies is greater public understanding of what National Gallery and SAM individually stand for – helped, no doubt, by SAM’s move out of the Civic District to Tanjong Pagar Distripark for a more rugged brand.

Whereas previously the terms “modern” (late 19th to early 20th century art) and “contemporary” (after 1945) made little difference to outsiders, Dr Tan has tweaked the formula slightly, so National Gallery has a greater South-east Asian focus, showing art from the 19th century to the present – encompassing both periods.

SAM, meanwhile, has been gradually pushed to take on a more international slant.

In addition to recent solos by Singapore artists Jane Lee and Ho Tzu Nyen, SAM also dedicated an immersive room to a work by German video artist Hito Steyerl in 2023. In 2024, it staged the hugely popular Olafur Eliasson: Your Curious Journey, the Icelandic-Danish artist’s first solo in South-east Asia.

“Both institutions provide different experiences, different ways of learning about art. Both are equally valuable in our ecology,” Dr Tan says.

Less obvious to the public is how, under his charge, both institutions are now in more active talks to provide a developmental track for artists from the moment they leave art school – from residencies at SAM, which allow emerging artists room to experiment, to the end-goal of a National Gallery solo that would signal their induction into Singapore’s art history canon.

To make sure he does not become the bottleneck for work processes, Dr Tan’s mantra is to restructure and delegate. He has recused himself from most curatorial work and allows his curators quite a free hand to stage diverse shows.

After six months of charting the course of the two institutions, he has also created the positions of chief curator at National Gallery – the newly appointed Dr Patrick Flores – and SAM – yet to be filled – as well as a slew of other posts, including two assistant chief executives and chief operating officers.

“If everything has to come up to me, then there’s going to be a lot of problems,” he says with a chuckle.

As an undergraduate, Dr Tan studied economics and politics at Queen Mary University of London, before being seduced by the museums and galleries of the British capital.

His ambition since then has been to forge an ecosystem here that is able to also create similar “unremarkable” encounters of art.

One such project was Gillman Barracks, which he oversaw as director of the Economic Development Board’s lifestyle programme office, though it was “somewhat ahead of its time”, he reflects, and needed more restaurants and non-art offerings to attract footfall.

Today, the site, aimed at growing the commercial arts sector at the southern end of Alexandra Road, is being studied for potential redevelopment for housing.

There may be more galleries now, but what is still missing are independent, artist-run spaces, the number of which has ebbed and flowed over the years.

“Right now, we are at a lower point. There are a few in the pipeline, but generally, the Institution of Contemporary Art at Lasalle College of the Arts has been quiet ever since the last director left,” Dr Tan says.

“We can help to an extent, but the irony is that once an institution comes in, it becomes a different kind of animal, whereas you want that kind of energy that comes from the ground.”

Under his care, National Gallery and SAM have developed a reputation for being able to expand and care for their collection, with SAM in recent years acquiring much more internationally.

In 2024, it bought two works in the Eliasson exhibition, including crowd favourite Symbiotic Seeing (2020).

Rather than wait for works to come up in auctions, curators and researchers are also actively researching and cultivating relationships with owners and collectors so that, in time, they will consider donating or selling certain pieces directly to the museums.

SAM’s new collection gallery, highlighting both its collections and donations, is another initiative to support such efforts.

“There are a lot of very wealthy private collectors. During the Covid-19 pandemic, we participated in seven or eight auctions, and lost out on every single one,” Dr Tan says.

“But more people are realising that we are an important collection. Most museums in the region collect largely their own art. They know we will position what they give us in a larger context.”