HIGH TEA WITH PATRICK FLORES

As chief curator of National Gallery Singapore for the past three years, Patrick Flores is as willing to talk about trade routes and diaspora as a curatorial framework for the museum going forward as he is to discuss Jollibee or Heart Evangelista’s opening Paris Fashion Week for Vietnamese designer Phan Huy.

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Flores is a multilayered academic and cultural observer; a guest scholar of the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles in 2014; and he was the artistic director of Singapore Biennale 2019 and curator of the Philippine and Taiwan Pavilions at the Venice Biennale in 2015 and 2022, respectively. Taking Southeast Asia’s untold stories around the world is part of his mission.

We sat with him inside Fairmont Singapore's Anti:Dote restaurant, which is hosting “An Impressionist Inspired Afternoon Tea” during the run of “Into the Modern” at National Gallery until March 1. Sitting down over a selection of TWG teas and savories and sweets modeled on the grain stacks and floral paintings of the Impressionists, he spoke about the museum’s possible future directions on the eve of its 10th anniversary.

PHILIPPINE STAR:

How do you see National Gallery Singapore building on its strengths going forward?

PATRICK FLORES: