Singapore Art Museum

The air quality got even worse today. As I had a dinner appointment at a classmate's apartment in Katong in the evening, I looked at several places where I could make a pitstop en route, but I nixed most of the options because they were either outdoors or they would involve some walking between those places and transport points for my eventual evening appointment. I was resigning myself to going to a mall when I realized there was a good option - the Singapore Art Museum (SAM) at a repurposed warehouse in Tanjong Pagar - which was both indoors and very close to an MRT station. With that, I happily got onto the MRT to Cantonment, a new station on the now-fully Circle Line.

The main highlight at SAM was Hiroshi Sugimoto's Form is Emptiness, which was due to wrap up in two days. Sugimoto is mostly known as a photographer, but he works in other media on display. I especially loved his fossil collection which included fish, frogs, and dragonflies.

There were a few other items at SAM which caught my attention, and others which were just downright pretentious. There were also a couple of solo exhibitions in other parts of the building. One of them - Jemana Murti's Source Code - caught my attention. In this exhibit, the artist displayed 3D printed figures from Balinese cosmology and tradition.

Overall, this was a worthwhile stop and a great option to do something interesting without venturing out too much into the polluted air.Read more