Gallery to mark Cultural Medallion recipients

A new gallery at the Arts House will be dedicated to Singapore's Cultural Medallion recipients and a comprehensive national digital repository will be set up to document their contributions.

Minister of State for Culture, Community and Youth Low Yen Ling announced this yesterday during the debate on her ministry's budget.

The Cultural Medallion is Singapore's highest artistic accolade and 128 arts practitioners have received the honour since it was established in 1979.

The idea for a gallery was mooted after the National Arts Council (NAC) consulted more than 50 recipients on what could be done to better support the arts and culture sector.

The NAC will work with the National Library Board to create the digital repository.

Cultural Medallion recipients welcomed the move. Indian dance pioneer Santha Bhaskar, 81, who received the honour in 1990, said: "They will serve to give Cultural Medallion recipients the due recognition they deserve. They will also inspire recipients to create more works which will capture the essence of the Singapore identity."

Choral conductor Jennifer Tham, 59, said the gallery and repository are wonderful ideas, though their significance to recipients "depends on "whether it is a collaborative process between curator and curated, and whether our voices are heard, contextualised and unfiltered".

Actor and director Ivan Heng, 56, joked that he is not ready to be put in a museum yet.

He expressed, however, the hope that awardees be given support to archive their works, for instance by attaching a dedicated scholar or archivist to them to organise and index their collection. There should also be efforts to translate their works into the other official languages of Singapore, he added.

Mrs Bhaskar added that more could be done for the honorees, such as giving them some form of pension. "I would suggest some kind of financial aid for their old age, as it is not easy making a living as an artiste."