really, she says, i am not happy about this. when it reopens next year, the singapore history museum is going to be renamed the national museum of singapore development. i don't like the sound of that. do you? what's wrong with continuing to call it the history museum? what do they mean anyway, development? ura gallery displays? hdb model estates? technological visions of the future? national education hao gong min videos? i don't suppose any presentation of history is ever apolitical but a museum of "development" sounds dubious to the extreme. i just don't want it to end up horribly politicised and becoming a kind of national education museum. the plans looks pretty good on the website - food, fashion, film and photography - but the name change makes me feel rather wary. since when has singapore ever passed up a chance to turn something into an NE opportunity, hmm?

i do believe the SHM needs to change. the diorama on the founding and early british rule of singapore badly needs redesigning. i went to see them four years ago and was taken aback by how unattractive they have become. or maybe i just remember them as being more exciting because as a child going into a dark room full of lit cases was exciting in its own? and i suppose it must be harder and harder for the SHM to put up new exhibitions since the establishment of the ACM. those collections which were once displayed at the SHM - like the ones on peranakan culture and history of marriage traditions - have now become the province of the ACM. and so will anything to do with the culture of early modern singapore, so the SHM is stuck with "pure" history exhibitions, and what do we have of that? it's really just the diorama and the farquhar collection. but i wouldn't have thought expansion was the way to go about changing. surely the museum doesn't need a new wing. what it needs is to do what the SAM does. we all know we could never create an asian version of the british museum or the louvre in singapore, so do what we are good at doing - maintain small, specialised permanent collections that are unique to the region and make the museum an attractive and intimate space for viewing them. and at the same time bring in big exhibitions throughout the year, like the SAM did with the da vinci exhibition last year, or the ACM with the british museum egypt collection. the old SHM building is just the right size for this, and the farquhar natural history collection is the perfect example of what i mean. those sketches are lovely, they're the only ones of their kind in the region, they're tied to our early history, and they are still of biological and aesthetic interest, a hybrid of european scientific interest and asian artistic style. i find the story of their acquisition compelling. and the few times i have gone to see them i have found them intriguing, in much the same way, i suppose, i have found the glass flowers here at harvard intriguing.

still, the expansion has gone ahead. and i don't quite know what i think of the look of the extension. a little ugly from this angle, although i guess you won't really ever look at it from that angle, if you enter through the old building. it is also a consolation they're building in the same style. at least they hadn't done to it what they did with the new supreme court building. they take a perfectly lovely supreme court, and they construct a hideous extension in a completely different style. i suppose i wouldn't mind so much the disunity if the new building actually looked good, but it's so ugly i can't look twice at it without getting all upset. so i am relieved the new SHM wing will be just like the old one, only bigger. 2006 isn't far off now. maybe i'll end up a fervent supporter when the time comes. we shall see.