Source: Straits Times, The (Singapore)
Source type: Newspaper
Published on: 30 Jun 2010

A MUSEUM exhibition of more than 300 precious art objects which opened last week in Belgium, more than 10,500km from here, has quite a bit of Singapore in it. A Passage To Asia at the Bozar, Centre for Fine Arts in the city of Brussels, aims to throw light on 25 centuries of trade, religious and cultural exchange between Asia and Europe. The exhibition is co-curated by Dr Kenson Kwok, former head of the Asian Civilisations Museum (ACM).

By Akshita Nanda

A MUSEUM exhibition of more than 300 precious art objects which opened last week in Belgium, more than 10,500km from here, has quite a bit of Singapore in it.

A Passage To Asia at the Bozar, Centre for Fine Arts in the city of Brussels, aims to throw light on 25 centuries of trade, religious and cultural exchange between Asia and Europe. The exhibition is co-curated by Dr Kenson Kwok, former head of the Asian Civilisations Museum (ACM).

And some treasures from the ACM are on display in the exhibition, including a 19th-century Quran from Terengganu and a Pejeng drum dating from more than 2,000 years ago.

The major exhibition, which occupies 10 big halls in the fine arts centre, is on until Oct 10 to coincide with the 8th Asia-Europe Meeting, a key biennial summit between the leaders of Asia and Europe.

Rather than rely on collections in the West, the Bozar wanted to bring together Eastern items never shown in Europe before and that its visitors would have had little chance to see.

In a reversal of the titular journey, items from 45 museums of 16 countries in Asia, such as Malaysia, India and China, have been transported to Belgium for the show. The loaned objects include burial urns, bronze ritual drums, gold jewellery, ivories, old maps, as well as cargo recently recovered from shipwrecks at the bottom of the sea.

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