Tag Archives: National Arts Council

Responding to Non-Constituency Member of Parliament (NCMP) Dennis Tan's questions on the National Arts Council's (NAC) withdrawal of funding for the book, "State of Emergency" by Jeremy Tiang, Minister for Culture, Community and Youth Grace Fu told parliament today that the book "did not meet the funding requirements mutually agreed upon as the content in the book deviated from the original proposal."

A storm is brewing in the Singapore arts scene as creative artists, already fuming over the National Arts Council's (NAC) decision to pull $8,000 worth of grants from Sonny Liew's award winning The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye, now taking aim at a quarterly literature anthology.

Ex-NMP Calvin Cheng thinks that the Government should stay out of making decisions on whether they should be funding art. This is especially since the government will receive backlash anyway - if it wants to fund, it has to come up with strict criteria but if it does not fund, it will be accused of censorship. What do you think?

The National Arts Council has become a laughing stock for congratulating Sonny Liew for a work it previously claimed "undermined" the Singapore government. According to publichouse.sg, NAC should have provided evidence to back its "ridiculous" reason for withdrawing funding. Otherwise, its just tragic for it to disavow Sonny Liew's brilliant comic.

It is heartening to see that businessmen, temples, clan associations and other organisations have come together to help raise $280,000 of the $600,000 to build a temporary market for stallholders who lost their source of livelihoods in the Jurong West fire. Kudos to this kind-hearted people for being part of the community effort!

It appears that after NAC CEO Kathy Lai wrote to the Straits Times to defend state censorship of the arts, NAC Chairman Chan Heng Chee defended the same in her speech as guest of honor at the Singapore International Film Festival. Her speech is an insult to the festival, which has prided itself on its support for freedom of expression by taking a principled stance against showing any film censored by the state.

This really sounds very strange! How is it possible to envisage that anyone would hold any “other art exhibition not done by the museum” – “to be allowed in the premises” – when presumably the museum decides on all exhibitions in its premises?