Kwok Kian Chow

Kwok Kian Chow

Former director, Singapore Art Museum

Kwok Kian Chow is a former senior curator, director and senior adviser of the Singapore Art Museum and National Gallery Singapore. He was also an associate professor and centre director at Singapore Management University.

Zeng Fanzhi, Sparkling Paintings — Virgin and Child 1 (left) and 2 (right) (2019-2023).

Chinese artist Zeng Fanzhi: Constructing a visual language all his own

Former director of the Singapore Art Museum Kwok Kian Chow shares his thoughts on reencountering the works of Chinese artist Zeng Fanzhi at the Museum of Art Pudong, Shanghai.
Showcasing rare masterpieces of Chinese ink, the Xiu Hai Lou Collection includes breathtaking pieces by major artists such as Ren Bonian, Qi Baishi, Xu Beihong and Zhang Daqian. (National Gallery Singapore)

Singapore’s Xiu Hai Lou Collection and what it tells us about late 19th-20th century Chinese art

Private collector Yeo Khee Lim (1917-1998) amassed one of the earliest and most comprehensive collections of late 19th-20th century Chinese art since he started collecting them in the 1940s and 50s. The stories in the collection — of literati painters, the Shanghai School, the Lingnan School, the Teochews and the Nanyang painters who passed through and lived on our shores — have been told before in exhibitions put up by Yeo himself and later by the National Gallery and others. But in a recent NTU conference on the life of Yeo Khee Lim, the importance of the prized collection comes back to the fore.
Renowned Chinese philosopher Li Zehou. (Weibo)

Growing up (and old) with Chinese philosopher Li Zehou

Think of how the switching between languages, cultures and epistemologies can itself be an integral part of reading and writing, and extend this to a thinker’s broadest philosophical opus, in concepts, articulations and communications — that is the work of Chinese philosophy great Li Zehou (1930-2021), says former Singapore Art Museum director, Kwok Kian Chow.