Tan became the director of National Gallery Singapore in 2013, two years before it opened its doors to the public in 2015. “We want to build the most comprehensive collection of Southeast Asian art from the 19th century to the present day. Our curators research into the art histories of Southeast Asia, identify the key artists who have defined the art of our region, and ensure we represent their contributions in our collection,” he says. “At the same time, we’re also focused on artists who may have been overlooked or forgotten in history, for whatever reason. These artists are usually female or those of ethnic minorities, because we know that history is always written from a particular perspective by certain people.”

Under Tan’s leadership, the gallery embarked on an ambitious exhibitions programme, including partnerships with international museums such as Centre Pompidou, Paris, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA) and the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (Momat).

“Part of our mission is to promote the understanding of Southeast Asian art and art histories within a global context. So this means positioning ourselves in relation to other art histories,” Tan explains. “It’s about showing that the Euro‐American art history that we’re most familiar with is not the only art history. In fact, we want to show how art history in Southeast Asia developed differently, and how this can influence how we think about art histories more globally.”

Some of the important exhibitions that have “defined the identity of our museum in rewriting our own art history” include Reframing Modernism: Painting from Southeast Asia, Europe and Beyond, the gallery’s first international collaboration, held in 2016 and organised with Centre Pompidou, Paris, that shifted the existing paradigm of how modernist painting is understood. Minimalism: Space. Light. Object., organised in collaboration with ArtScience Museum, looked at the emergence, development and legacies of the titular groundbreaking art movement. Meanwhile, the ongoing Tropical: Stories from Southeast Asia and Latin America is the first large‐scale museum exhibition in the world to take a comparative approach across the two regions united by their shared struggles against colonialism.

Tan also points to the importance of historical shows, such as Between Worlds: Raden Saleh and Juan Luna, “to highlight that there were very accomplished artists from Southeast Asia in the 19th century, who were making their mark in Europe”. Of note, too, is the fact that the 2017 exhibition featured The Death of Cleopatra, Luna’s most important painting after Spoliarium, shown for the first time since its last appearance in 1887. Through shows such as Awakenings: Art in Society in Asia 1960s–1990s, which was shown at MMCA and Momat as well, the gallery highlights its mission of “showing how art can be something important in our society”—the 2019 exhibition explored how artists challenged political, social and artistic conventions in response to major global events such as the Cold War.

It was in London, while studying for his Bachelor of Science in economics and politics at Queen Mary College, University of London, that Tan first became interested in art. His campus was situated in the East End of London, close to the art gallery Whitechapel Gallery, which he would pass by every day on the bus. “One day, I decided to stop by; it was an exhibition of British painter Tony Bevan. It was my first time visiting an exhibition in London and [from then on], I started going to other exhibitions at galleries and museums,” he shares. “I also had a very inspiring political philosophy professor who got me interested in thinking about art and politics. As you know, we now cannot separate art from its social and political context—and philosophy is deeply connected to art through aesthetics.”

His interest in art further developed throughout the 15 years he spent in the UK, where he also did his Masters of Arts in post‐war and contemporary art at Sotheby’s Institute of Art – London. It was during this time that he started writing art criticism for art magazines. He later worked in a gallery in London for a year, where he curated small exhibitions, before pursuing a PhD in art history from the University of Manchester. By end‐2003, he landed his first job in art back in Singapore as director of the then‐Earl Lu Gallery (later renamed the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore), which is the curatorial division of the Lasalle College of the Arts. He was also appointed a co‐curator of the inaugural Singapore Biennale in 2006 and the curator for the Singapore Pavilion at the 2005 Venice Biennale.

“When I came back [from the UK], the art scene in Singapore was different from what it is now; there was so much that needed to be done—and I was thinking how best I could contribute,” says Tan. Art history education was one such area. He later joined Sotheby’s Institute of Art—where he did his MA in London—when it opened a Singapore campus and helped to set up the MA in Contemporary Art programme, where he also taught for two years. (On a side note: in 2017, the National Gallery Singapore started a Minor in Art History programme with the National University of Singapore, which was ranked as the fourth best art history programme globally by the QS World University Rankings by Subject in 2023.)

A two‐year stint at Osage Gallery in Hong Kong followed, where Tan oversaw its spaces in the city as well as those in Singapore, Shanghai and Beijing. “I’d say that we helped develop the markets for Singapore and Southeast Asian artists. One of the shows we did was by Jane Lee, who is now one of the most successful contemporary artists from Singapore.

It was a way to see how we can promote Southeast Asian art within the larger Asia, [in places] such as Hong Kong and China,” says Tan. The experience, he adds, allowed him to “understand the different parts of the art world, particularly the commercial art world, and also establish networks”, which proved useful when he was asked to return home by the Singapore Economic Development Board to oversee the development of the Gillman Barracks art district as its programme director for special projects, his last role before joining the National Gallery.

With a career in the visual arts that started in the contemporary, it was no surprise when Tan was asked to also oversee SAM in 2019. “SAM was kind of struggling with its identity after the National Gallery opened. I was asked to come on board to better align the direction of the two museums, define their distinctions, as well as getting them to work together more closely,” he shares. “SAM is a contemporary art museum that looks at contemporary art globally or internationally, but from the perspective of Southeast Asia. We still have a focus on contemporary art from Singapore and Southeast Asia because we’re located in the region, but with a more international approach to thinking about where art is today.”

With its two buildings on Bras Basah Road and Queen Street currently closed for a major building revamp, SAM currently operates out of its pop‐up contemporary art space at Tanjong Pagar Distripark, which opened in 2022.

This is in line with a new strategic direction that was introduced the year before. “The new direction is twofold: one is to be a museum that disappears and the second is to be a constituent museum, working with our constituents—they sometimes get called stakeholders, but we prefer to think of them as constituents—to rethink, firstly, what our society needs to be, and then how our museum needs to function to get there,” Tan explains.

As part of the new direction of introducing meaningful art encounters into the every day as well as inspiring change through art and collaborations, The Everyday Museum was introduced as a public art initiative “for the museum to be seen as a series of experiences with art, not confined to the physical building, but in publicly accessible spaces”.

There are two ongoing projects: Port/raits of Tanjong Pagar showcases the dramatic transformations of the district over the decades through a series of public artworks by six artists and collectives, while Singapore Deviation is a series of public art commissions exploring the iconic Rail Corridor in Singapore through the works of three artists.

One notable recently concluded project of The Everyday Museum is Wayang Spaceship by Berlin‐based Singaporean artist Ming Wong, which took pride of place at the Container Bay at the rear entrance of SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark, where Tatler photographed Tan for the opening image of this story and that on the opposite page. The “spaceship” is seemingly dormant during the day, with its reflective surfaces mirroring the bustling traffic around the container seaport, but it springs to life come dusk as a travelling Chinese opera theatre with light, sound and film.

With the world of cinema as his gateway to imagination, Wong is among a generation of Singaporean artists who started working in the noughties, and whose works and practices still speak to us today. Another such artist is Ho Tzu Nyen, whose multidisciplinary practice, anchored on history, myths and identities and spanning two decades, is showcased in an ongoing mid‐career survey exhibition, Ho Tzu Nyen: Time & the Tiger, co‐organised by SAM and Art Sonje Center.

Tan reveals that SAM will be presenting more of such solo shows of “artists from roughly this generation, not just from Singapore but also Southeast Asia”, while its SAM Contemporaries platform will spotlight emerging artists and collectives.

“The nature of contemporary art is that it transcends all mediums. We identify contemporary art as painting, sculpture, installation and video, but we commonly see artists working across different mediums now; for one work, they create a painting, but in another, they produce a video. I think that’s the nature of what artists are doing today and we have to find ways to accommodate them,” says Tan. “My job is to build the best curatorial teams for both institutions—and allow them to come up with interesting ideas.”

For all that he is doing for Singapore’s visual arts scene, it is no surprise when Tan says: “My life revolves around art. I don’t think I can do anything that’s not related to art.” For everything else, he keeps things simple and streamlined, from sticking to a colour palette of black, navy and white when it comes to the clothes he wears, to his Nothing smartphone, which is engineered to make its usage more mindful, with fewer distractions.

“I want people to think of Singapore whenever they think of the top museums in the world. If someone asks you, ‘what do you think are the top museums in the world’: there’s The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and there’s also the National Gallery Singapore and [the] Singapore Art Museum,” Tan enthuses. “That’s my aim for the two museums.”

Being in a room full of art and design books covering various subjects from Antony Gormley to Alexander McQueen (“McQueen is an artist, really,” says Tan), surely, this is a question we have to ask Tan: what is his favourite book? “My all‐time favourite art book is Kant after Duchamp by Thierry de Duve. It’s probably one of the best books about art ever written, and it really transformed my understanding and perception of art,” he says. And the rest, as the saying goes, is (art) history.

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