Tun Tan Cheng Lock Trust donates $1.4m to Peranakan Museum for curatorial role
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
Curator Naomi Wang has been appointed as the inaugural Tun Tan Cheng Lock Curator of Peranakan Art.
PHOTO: PERANAKAN MUSEUM
SINGAPORE – The Tun Tan Cheng Lock Trust has donated $1.4 million to create a named curatorial role for the Peranakan Museum. This is the first time a curatorial position has been sponsored by a private donor for a public museum.
Curator Naomi Wang has been appointed as the inaugural Tun Tan Cheng Lock Curator of Peranakan Art, the museum announced in a statement on Jan 30. The role is for a five-year term with an option to renew. The senior curator (South-east Asia) at the Asian Civilisations Museum (ACM) and Peranakan Museum joined the museum in 2015.
The 37-year-old thanked the trust and said: “The named curatorship supports the kind of long-term research that shapes how stories are told in the galleries. It strengthens our ability to connect objects to wider regional histories, offering audiences a richer and more layered understanding of Peranakan art.”
The gift allows the Peranakan Museum to dedicate an additional curator to Peranakan art, which will strengthen its research capacity and ability to develop exhibitions.
The Tun Tan Cheng Lock Trust was set up by the late Agnes Tan Kim Lwi in memory of her father, a Malaysian businessman and philanthropist well-known as a champion of the Chinese community.
Tun Tan’s grandnephew Peter Lee, founding curator of the NUS Baba House and a well-known scholar of Peranakan culture, is an adviser to the trust who makes recommendations on donations.
He said in a statement: “This gift allows the museum to look beyond the confines of the Peranakan community in Singapore to far-reaching networks across South-east Asia. Deeper investigations into the idea of cross-cultural art and shared heritage are central to Singapore’s national identity.”
Director of ACM and Peranakan Museum Clement Onn said: “This is a significant milestone that reaffirms the museum’s mission to advance the understanding of Peranakan art and culture through the research and presentation of the community’s material culture.”
Private donors supporting arts academia and research are a rarity, although there have been some high-profile gifts over the past decade.
UOB in 2024 donated an undisclosed sum to the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts donated $1 million to the Intercultural Theatre Institute in 2019.
