Singapore Art Museum at 30: New open-air gallery and questions over its direction

SINGAPORE – Since moving into the relatively far-flung container building of Tanjong Pagar Distripark in 2022, the Singapore Art Museum (SAM) management has been on the receiving end of contradictory feedback.

There are complaints from visitors who think this new location too “ulu” (Singlish for remote) – the nearest Tanjong Pagar MRT station is a 20-minute walk away.

A second group, mostly younger, remains vocally supportive of a well-resourced art institution finally having the courage to exit the colonial cluster of buildings in the civic district.

In the year of SAM’s 30th anniversary, its director and chief executive Eugene Tan reaffirms the museum’s Catch-22 decision to settle at Tanjong Pagar Distripark.

By the end of 2026, it will open its fifth gallery, up from the original two. This will finally bring its total exhibition space to 3,800 sq m, on a par with that of its previous home at the former St Joseph’s Institution (SJI) and Catholic High School buildings.

This commitment is despite Tanjong Pagar Distripark’s uncertain future, with leases running out and the surrounding areas zoned for housing for the Greater Southern Waterfront development.

The new gallery, on the third floor where staff play pickleball on their break, will explore open-air exhibition techniques. “It’s an experiment and we will reveal more,” Dr Tan teases.

All galleries, as is the industry norm, are air-conditioned 24 hours a day. In the new space, adds Dr Tan, SAM is thinking about how it can avoid imposing such demands on the environment, while keeping the space comfortable for visitors and suitable for artworks.

The decision to stay at Tanjong Pagar Distripark is reflective of a museum that sometimes feels like it is endlessly reinventing its identity. The opening of the National Gallery Singapore (NGS) in 2015 forced SAM to narrow its mandate. Previously the only dedicated art museum in Singapore, it was shunted into focusing on post-1980s contemporary art.

In 2019, its old home at the former SJI and Catholic High buildings shut for a $90 million revamp. Conservation issues and the Covid-19 pandemic delayed its scheduled 2021 reopening, and Tanjong Pagar Distripark was pitched as a stopgap.

Over the last four years, however, SAM has found the industrial building’s high ceilings and more grungy vibe congenial to its identity. The many empty units there offer flexibility to expand and contract according to circumstances.

Dr Tan contextualises the decision as one in step with the times. “It’s a bit of an irony when you have contemporary artists lamenting the state of the environment and then new museums are built. Here, we are not building a new building, but adapting it to fit our needs.

“SAM was based on the model of the museum that we’ve known for a long time. These were spaces outside what was happening in society, for comfort and refuge. That’s why when you went into a gallery, you were supposed to speak softly.

“A contemporary art museum should be aware of what we need to be at this time and age. Where it is affects how it is seen.”

A museum in limbo?

In some ways, location is the least of the 30-year-old museum’s dilemmas. The opening of the new Cantonment MRT station on its doorstep in July should alleviate the problem of access, even if Dr Tan insists this is not a silver bullet.

The museum’s concerted push in recent years towards hosting and collecting international artworks has caused some concern that this is distracting from its South-east Asian and Singapore mission. It has also sometimes struggled to juggle its regular duties with steering the mammoth Singapore Biennale and, from 2024, organising Singapore’s national pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

Dr Tan, appointed SAM’s director in 2019, became the chief executive of NGS and SAM in 2024 to better distinguish the identities of the two museums, and promptly re-conceptualised the split.

Before he assumed his post, SAM was a contemporary museum engaging with South-east Asian art from the late 20th century to the present day, versus NGS’ focus on South-east Asian art created between the 19th and 20th centuries.

Now, he reiterates: “The distinction is that NGS looks at South-east Asia regardless of time, while retaining a historicising perspective. SAM looks at contemporary art regardless of place, but recognising that we are situated in Singapore and South-east Asia.”

This more cosmopolitan approach is reflected in SAM’s shows and the works it acquires. Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson’s solo show in 2024, the acclaimed artist’s first in South-east Asia, drew the biggest crowds.

From this show, SAM acquired two works, including the large-scale work Symbiotic Seeing (2020), a gallery-size ceiling installation created with laser lights and fog resembling a sky undergoing accelerated changes in weather.

SAM has made sure not to conflate “international” with “Western”. At the 2026 Art SG mega fair, it bought four works by Lebanese artist Mona Hatoum and Korean-Canadian artist Lotus Kang with $250,000 from the SAM Art SG Fund.

The switch has proven popular with patrons, Dr Tan says. “There are local and locally based supporters who see the merits of Singapore having a contemporary international art collection and museum.”

But some curators and arts players disagree. Independent curator Tan Siuli, who was at SAM from 2008 to 2020 as its head of collections and senior curator, says: “This new mission is quite generic. SAM used to be very clear that it was a collector of, and advocate for, South-east Asian art. The question is, what are you now doing that other players can’t?”

Ms Tan, who worked under all four SAM directors, fondly recalls the tenure of director Tan Boon Hui, who held the post from 2009 to 2013. He assigned each curator a portfolio of a South-east Asian country – Ms Tan’s was Indonesia – and allowed them to spend extended periods doing field work and building relationships.

Then, institutions in the region regarded SAM as the standard-bearer for the South-east Asian art scene. A running joke was that whatever was shown in Singapore would later find its way to art festivals like Artjog in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, and the gigantic Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in Brisbane, Australia.

That trailblazing reputation is gone, according to Ms Tan. She says: “Especially in the last couple of years, a lot of regional neighbours have established significant art spaces and are taking on a lot of what SAM used to do. You have Dib and Kunsthalle in Bangkok, Macan in Jakarta. Even in Singapore, private players like Tanoto Foundation, The Institutum and Kim Association are showing great art.”

This decline in reputation, she adds, is due to the dilution of mission, further hampered by SAM’s new location.

“It doesn’t have a building to call its own, and the movement from galleries downstairs to upstairs is not seamless. I also haven’t seen anything taking advantage of the warehouse space that would not have been shown in the old building. That, in tandem with other things, gives me the impression that this is a museum in limbo.”

Another former SAM curator Khairuddin Hori, who in 2025 led the United Arab Emirates’ Manar Abu Dhabi light exhibition, agrees that there is uncertainty in SAM’s overall curatorial direction.

“It used to be clear that we were where South-east Asian contemporary art was, and that’s why we have such a huge collection of South-east Asian art,” he says. “With the growing emphasis on international programming, I’m not always certain what the institutional proposition is. We rarely receive the most important works from these artists, and many of these exhibitions feel detached from the broader narratives and realities of this region.”

A museum’s collection gives it identity, and invites collaboration with other institutions with other focal points. Mr Hori recalls that SAM was initially founded for Singaporeans to have a place to learn about neighbouring countries and cultures through art.

“It became like an education mechanism for issues that, for example, Thailand and Indonesia were facing that were not necessarily written in textbooks,” he says. “It validated the work of South-east Asian artists and canonised them. Museums, to have authority, need to put together shows that are consolidating or that make a statement.”

But SAM’s new direction can also be seen as an effort at mainstreaming contemporary art, which is already challenging for the average visitor, says SAM’s first director Kwok Kian Chow.

“It is expanding the syllabus, so to speak,” he says. “The understanding of Singapore became more sophisticated because we added South-east Asia. These references from the world can have the same effect.”

In 2025, some 1.68 million visitors participated in SAM’s exhibitions and programmes.

Mr Kwok prefers to be positive about SAM’s new trajectory. “Ideally, NGS and SAM would be in close proximity. Now, the audience becomes bifurcated and I suspect the group of people who would look at both might not be a very huge group.

“But there are also many commercial galleries at Tanjong Pagar Distripark. We can think of the synergies that are possible and view it as a total Tanjong Pagar Distripark experience.”

A Singapore Biennale office?

There has been some backlash to SAM’s curation of the Singapore Biennale, which ended in March.

In an opinion editorial, The Straits Times’ arts editor Ong Sor Fern called the event haphazard, disconnected from the community and inaccessible even to determined arts lovers.

Despite a budget of nearly $8 million, artworks were difficult to find and the affair lacked coherent through lines, she added. “Might that money be better spent supporting mid-career practitioners who are going places or need that extra push to go international?”

The piece prompted then National Arts Council (NAC) chief executive Low Eng Teong and Dr Tan to write a joint response to ST’s forum to say that they will continue to review how the Singapore Biennale can best serve artists, audiences and the wider cultural landscape.

To suggestions that the biennale be handled by a separate Singapore Biennale office, Dr Tan says: “That’s a common model in other countries, right? We do it because we see the benefits of the biennale and how it aligns with SAM’s mission. But it’s not unthinkable that it’s organised outside of SAM.”

With just 10 curators, SAM has also organised the Singapore Pavilion at the Venice Biennale since 2024. Dr Tan laments: “We say we take on too much. Sometimes we don’t have the right level of resources to do what we need to do.”

Mr Kwok says biennales, which are held in many cities around the world, often run the risk of becoming insular and fall into the trap of simply talking to one another. “It has to find the right balance to speak to the local,” he says. “Otherwise, it’s just people flying around.”

Ms Tan and Mr Hori think SAM should cede the organising of the biennale to other players.

Mr Hori says: “A biennale is a full-time undertaking. It requires years of fund-raising, public education, relationship-building and smaller lead-up exhibitions. Singapore has many independent curators, researchers and art historians. If the biennale continues to be driven solely from within SAM, it risks remaining too closely tied to the museum’s institutional DNA.”

Ms Tan was still at SAM when the NAC, which had organised the biennale in 2006 and 2008, had an informal conversation with SAM about taking on the event. She recalls: “Our answer at the time was, It would be an honour and privilege, but we also felt that it would be better to have more voices in the art scene and not have it concentrated in one institution.”

SAM began organising the Singapore Biennale in 2011.

The good news is that SAM remains well-resourced relative to other institutions in the region, and being shown in its exhibitions still represents a palpable boost for younger artists. Its efforts at promoting Singapore shows such as local contemporary artist Ho Tzu Nyen’s, which travelled to South Korea and New York, are bearing fruit.

Singapore artists Khairulddin Wahab, Moses Tan and Chok Sixuan have also had positive experiences with the institution.

Khairulddin, 35, whose work was featured in the 2023 group show Residues & Remixes: SAM Contemporaries, says the developmental platform indirectly opened many doors for him, from having his work acquired by a European institution to commissions for large-scale installations at The Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay and Art SG.

He believes SAM bringing in international artists could attract more visitors, who could then be tempted to drop in on concurrent exhibitions of local and regional artists.

“From the outside looking in, it looks like SAM is diversifying itself more,” he adds. “The blockbusters are a way for it to gain international prestige and to be considered a serious international museum, not just one that is focused on South-east Asia. It’s about landing that balancing act.”

Dr Tan says it will be easier to understand the museum’s work in time, and that SAM is committed to longer-term work to cultivate younger visitors by engaging with schools.

He still sees SAM as a young institution. “NGS’ opening has allowed SAM to take on a new direction, which I think we’re just starting to see the beginnings of. The art we see as contemporary today will become more familiar with time.”