Navigating official historical discourse within arts institutions (a case study of curatorial narratives in relation to The Singapore Story)
In the recent years, the arts have seen many artworks and exhibitions discussing the historical narratives of Singapore. More conversations happened when Singapore decided to hold a year long event commemorating the 200th year anniversary since Singapore was found by Sir Stamford Raffles. These were accompanied with debates surrounding government funding and how it is only given for artworks that do not challenge the establishment. The research will analyse the different ways visual arts institutions navigate official historical discourse. This will be achieved through doing a case study on exhibitions curatorial narratives in relation to The Singapore Story. Semi structured interview and inductive inferring through qualitative methods were used to gain a deeper understanding on the extent of a curator’s role, to question whether specific types of funding sources directly affects the narrative of an exhibition, and to examine and compare the position of the government as well as private institutions with regards to the discourse surrounding The Singapore Story.