It's not often that I make time for touristy things while I'm in Singapore, but today was a happy exception. I ended up joining my brother at the National Gallery after finding out that he was going to check out the Into the Modern traveling exhibit of impressionist art from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Tobie and I had seen a similar exhibition all the way back in 2012, but this was supposed to be a whole other set of paintings.
On the whole, it was a nice experience as there were some standout pieces. In an attempt to be clever, I'd say that I came for the Monets but stayed for the Southeast Asian art. To be fair, there were some interesting pieces, and the set of Monets they curated as the "closing" of the exhibit was indeed beautiful. But I also can't really speak to standout pieces. If anything, the exhibit at least brought Camille Pissarro to my attention, because his pieces were absolutely beautiful. I'm a sucker for paint used to add texture to a painting, and he was quite masterful in this area.
I finished with the Impressionists before my brother did, so I used that time to explore the Supreme Court wing of the gallery and check out their collection of SEA art as well. Apart from the building itself being so interesting and many of the gallery halls being repurposed courtrooms, there were a lot of striking paintings in the collection. Beyond being able to see art from across the region, they had a surprising number of paintings by notable Filipino artists like Luna and Armorsolo. It was great to see these pieces in person versus another art book or whatever.
This is clearly a reminder from the universe that I need to visit our own museums more.
After that, we mainly accompanied the parents as they continued shopping around the area. They were at Funan while we were at the gallery, and then we all met up at Ion Orchard for more of that good stuff. Orchard was kinda bonkers given it's a weekend, but we survived.
No big plans for tonight, so I expect to continue working on my O Bar videos from the anniversary event. It's crazy that it has only been a week since that big event!
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