so many months having trickled away, i now resign myself to the usual five-second review which i’d hoped precisely to avoid in not immediately writing about one of the best art exhibitions i’d seen all year. i will confess that with my abiding penchant for 19th century european naturalists a title taken from the letters of alfred wallace (‘breakfast at eight, jungle at nine’) would have won me over completely anyway without more. (if you share this obsession you must also immediately visit the new lee kong chian natural history museum: the displays on its mezzanine level make one’s inner historian and librarian leap — slices of their world of sketchpad watercolours and bound journals filled with jottings on the go; of collecting cases brimming over in weathered satchels; jars of preserving fluids and dissection kits; of letters and diaries in longhand (i want to reread the voyage of the beagle again); records and reports whacked out on old typewriters. in one display case a selection of william farquhar’s drawings were juxtaposed (by someone with a sense of humour and historiography) with stuffed specimens of the corresponding animal. in another a grave type-written report to head office, concerning the fate of museum specimens with the japanese invasion imminent.)
sidenote about the museum: it is not merely that is splendidly turned-out, but that it gets the balance right, the sentens and solas. it is a grown-up’s natural history museum with much for the younger person (so often public natural history museums are the other way round — the level of scientific explanation is too basic, there’s little for the older visitor other than the inherent half-fearful fascination we have with the alieness and variety of other species.) here they set the science out in a clear, uncomplicated fashion but without over-sacrificing complexity, illustrating concepts by teaching you what to look for and how, yet never losing a sense of dramatic presentation and aesthetic value and entertainment. it is very small of course, like all museums in singapore, but punches above its weight. and as i find this is going quite far away from the subject of ernest goh’s art that had better be deferred once again.
Best of the Transparent Hummingbird
