“The Collector’s Show: Chimera” opened at the Singapore Art Museum over the weekend, during Art Stage Singapore. It is a group show of works from private collections around the world, with Takashi Murakami, Yayoi Kusama and other well-known artists represented.

Siu Li Tan, assistant director and curator of the Singapore Art Museum, talks about the idea behind the exhibition, the role of the collector and what piece was the hardest to get.

Why “Chimera?”

“Chimera” has multiple meanings, and is simultaneously evocative of a sense of mystery, danger and illusion. It fits in well with the kind of tone and experience I wanted to convey with this exhibition, which I hope will seduce its viewers at the same time as it disturbs and challenges them.

What piece proved to be the most complicated to bring into the show?

I am particularly happy that we managed to secure Rashid Rana’s “Red Carpet IV.” Since he has done [more than] a couple of “Red Carpets,” you would think that getting one for our show would be relatively easy, but it was far from the case. The works we wanted were either on exhibition elsewhere, or the dates were not good (since the works were needed for another show somewhere else), or collectors were simply reluctant to let the works leave their living rooms. We met with a lot of dead ends, and it took some persistence (and taking calls in the middle of the night), but we managed to locate an edition of “Red Carpet IV,” and the collector very generously agreed to lend it to us.

In Asia, some say private collectors are more influential than museums, especially for contemporary art. What do you think of this?

I have been watching with interest the recent mushrooming of private museums and art foundations across Asia. Some of these have been established with very clear aims and ambitions in mind: Besides serving as an exhibition platform for new art forms, these private museums or foundations are also committed to nurturing an appreciation and understanding of contemporary art with their education and outreach initiatives.

At the same time, however, a number of other private museums exist purely to house their founders’ expansive collections, and are not exactly accessible to the public. This is where an institution like SAM can play a role — in bringing together, in a single venue, important or interesting works of art drawn from these private collections.

It remains to be seen how this recent trend of private museums develops in this region, for it has enormous potential to shape the contemporary art scene — given the lack of public art institutions with the means and/or inclination to exhibit contemporary art. I can’t help but think about the FACE (Foundation of Arts for a Contemporary Europe) model, where an alliance of art foundations established by private collectors organizes exhibitions which draw on works from their collections and which travel around the different country venues. Imagine what a similar model could do for contemporary art in Asia.

At a time when museum budgets, especially for acquisitions, in established museum-going societies in Europe and North America are being slashed, what is the role of collectors? Should museums bother to build permanent collections?

Increasingly, collectors are stepping in to take up roles formerly associated with museums or art institutions, for example, that of championing and promoting new art and artists. In recent years, there have been a number of art prizes and awards funded by private collectors, which aim to identify and groom the next generation of artists. Take, for instance, the Future Generation Art Prize, established by the Viktor Pinchuk Foundation. Finalist artists this year were given an exhibition as a fringe event of the Venice Biennale, no doubt raising their profile greatly, and winners are paired up with “mentor artists,” who are stars of the contemporary art world.

It is also true that in Europe and North America, many museums are being priced out of contemporary art acquisitions, with a number of “star” pieces entering private collections rather than museum collections. A number of collectors do choose to donate major works to museums, particularly in America where there is a strong culture of philanthropy. In Europe, quite a number of collectors have opted to establish their own private museums with collections to rival those of public museums. Think of Pinault’s Palazzo Grassi and Punta Della Dogana in Venice.

The situation in Southeast Asia is a little different, although the question of whether museums should have permanent collections or not is something we have also discussed at SAM. For us there was never any doubt that we needed to build a permanent collection of Southeast Asian contemporary art, so as to ensure that we would be able to preserve and present the art coming out of our region to audiences not just in Singapore but in the rest of the world as well.

Before the 2000s, the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum in Japan and Queensland Art Gallery in Australia collected a fair bit of Southeast Asian art, but they have since either shifted their collection focus or realigned their priorities. It is therefore important to us at SAM that we collect important works of our time before they disappear into private collections, and become difficult to access in future.

It is also in our national interest to build a strong permanent collection of Singapore and Southeast Asian contemporary art, because we want Singaporeans to be able to look at and understand themselves and their neighbours beyond what they read in the papers and see on TV. Art is often a reflection and critique of society, albeit in a creative or philosophical way, and provides us with a different lens through which we can study and understand society and the world around us.

One of the possible issues with collectors is that some of them may also be active art investors. Given how lively the Asian auction market is, and the international art world’s experience with the Estella Collection, how do you as a curator negotiate this?

This happens everywhere, not just in Asia. And if a work of art or an artist is good, or interesting, then the work will appeal to curators and collectors alike, and it will be featured in museum presentations as well as at auction. As curators, we are primarily concerned with the significance and merit of an artwork, not its market value.

Having said that, I should point out that museum curators do tend to go for rather different works as compared to collectors or speculators, many of whom will choose to pass up on more challenging or strident works, or works in mediums that are difficult to “collect,” such as performance or a large immersive/site-specific installation.

As far as possible, as curators we do try to work with collectors whom we know are “serious” about their art collections. Many collectors we work with are established, and will almost never part with the works they own.

By Alexandra A. Seno
http://blogs.wsj.com/scene/2012/01/16/are-collectors-more-important-than-museums-one-curators-take/?mod=djemSceneA