a sixth sense cannot make up for a complete lack of common sense
the resident
-best known as May Ching-
-09/01/1990-
-19 years 1.2 months-
-mugger/slacker/writer-
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Saturday, February 09, 2008, 11:21 pm
Today was educationally enriching.Sorry for not updating faithfully despite the holidays. Terribly busy with outings, homework and more outings, ya? I'm the most un-Chinese Chinese hence the lack of Chinese New Year celebrations. (Between you and me, I'm in it for the hong baos :)
Went to the National Museum today with Hema to sketch the Greek masterpieces on display. Thank the Louvre for undergoing renovations so (part of) their priceless collection would get loaned out. Despite having to pay an outrageous price of $4 for mere entry, the exhibits were worth it.
Just want to note here that for its sake, the National Museum had better be adding more exhibits and wings soon. Yesterday, because of the Chinese New Year holiday, the entire place was open to the public for free. Skipping the History Gallery because of the queue which rivalled that for the MacDonalds' Hello Kitty dolls, I went to the Food and Photography Galleries. The displays there were very nice but rather lacking in content. Indeed, many of the artefacts on display were actually from Malaysia or from Malaysians who moved to Singapore after the war.
The intriguing thing is access to all galleries costs $10 for an adult, mind-bogglingly expensive, in my opinion, for such measly offerings. When I was living in New Zealand, the Auckland War Museum alone cost only NZ$5 (roughly the same in Sing dollars) and was jammed full of artefacts, all original and all ancient. There were Maori canoes and weapons, settlers' tools, war medals, moa skeletons, stuffed native animals, war memorabilia, an entire Japanese Zero plane... The great memorial wall recording for posterity the names and faces of those who never came home from war was up there too. There was even a section on the Holocaust which featured authentic Stars of David once worn by German Jews. It was impossible to take in the entire museum in one day. You needed at least a week to read every plaque, see every artefact and digest every scrap of information. (I know, I did it.)
But I digress.
This blog post is supposed to be about the National Museum of Singapore. Granted, the country is much younger than New Zealand. But please, please stuff it with more content so that the people of Singapore get their money's worth of education and heritage.
I made three sketches, of beautiful sculptures of Ares, Aphrodite and Apollo which I immediately hated. What struck me that the great majority of these gorgeous sculptures are all Roman copies of Greek originals and those copies were themselves 2,000 years old. Adding variety were numerous funeral steles, terracotta jars, tablets, ancient Barbies...
Below are some of the highlights of the exhibition, taken rather inexpertly by me.
Funerary lion, sculpted for an Attican tomb.
Minerva (Athena), goddess of wisdom.
The Borghese Ares, god of war.
An athlete taking part in the discus event.
Apollo the Lizard-Slayer.
Eros, god of love.
The Borghese Aphrodite, by the same artist of the Ares above.
Another statue of Aphrodite, in another style.
Stele depicting Orpheus' parting from Eurydice, with Hermes on the far left. This piece is remarkable for the anguish of separation, so poignantly portrayed here.
Oh yah, in case you are either blur or you are so captivated by the brilliantness of my blog entry, you'd have noticed my new blogskin. The theme is 'mug til death' and not Sweeney Todd :) It suits me just fine since I am indeed bogged down with holiday homework and will most likely be writing until I bleed all over the page. Whoopee. Well, at least red is an auspicious colour. *smiles*
Labels: auckland museum, greek sculpture, nz