Susie Lingham – Nurturing a local talent

In the realms of the esoterics, an area called arts, the big names are often Europeans. The big galleries and museums are managed and fronted by big European names. The few big local names in arts are generally confined to music and dance. We do have a few painters of international standing.
 
The gurus or regents of running art houses and museums are never Singaporeans. Fortunately in this area, we have not sold ourselves cheap by importing foreign talents except for one, if I am not mistaken. The National Museum, the National Art Gallery and the National Heritage Board are all helmed by locals. Cannot imagine the National Heritage Board being helmed by a foreigner. But it looks quite natural given our colonial history to have an angmoh to sit there, even if he is 30 year old who did not know what colonial Singapore was. We were once owned by angmohs and so it becomes a natural right of passage of sort to have an angmoh to look authentic or international.
 
Good God, they appointed a local lass in Susie Singham to head the Singapore Arts Museum. I am sure there must be thousands of better qualified foreigners with great CVs, authentic ones I am sure, to put Susie Singham in a corner. The decision to put Susie there must be a national one, one of pride and confidence that we are as good as the best in the world. How else are we going to have a good representation in this field if we keep hiring foreigners to screw the local talents? The locals will have no chance to be trained, to gain the experience and credentials to write in their CVs that they have taken such an appointment.
 
I hope our local institutions will take the cue from our arts institutions to go local and nurture out local talents to be there with the best in the world. If we don’t train our locals, if we don’t give them a chance, who will?
 
The painful part is to place a foreign fake to helm our national institutions and deprive our own from having a go at these positions. New pink ICs are just as sick and fake.
Hope the daft in charge are taking the hints and do not be stubborn to go foreign to prove how inadequate and incompetent they are. It would not be funny for MOM to turn out a few foreign fakes at the highest level and kicking local asses.
 
By the way, the title of an article on Susie Singham by Huang Lijie is titled, ‘A heart for the arts’. Luckily the heart is in the right place and not misplaced.