journal | Museum [noun]

by Raksha Mahtani 
NUS Museum

Museum [noun]:

1. Lawrence Chin explicating preservation to a series of classes of baby curators who aren't art history experts and hence may be unemployable;

2. Charles Merewether talking about the index being the crucial difference between the archive and the collection, and describing his illustrious career without ever mentioning the word fame;

3. Rubbing shoulders with two artists you're currently following on Twitter, one of whom sat 3 seats away from you at a roundtable - with absolutely no pretense of false grandeur about them;

4. Encountering art at its truest, most pristine, most democratic state at concurrent arts festival, with two figures on a phosphorus-lit stage reminding you that loss is always felt before it is learnt;

5. Realising that in art of collaboration, the phrase, 'Yes, and?' must be scattered generously in the spirit of inquiry and support;

6. Spending time with close friend and fellow dreamer who has been in your life for close to a decade (@lactasered) on the long eastbound ride home(#faghag4lyfe);

7. Acquaintances turn groupmates turn warm friends in the cold wintry conditions of the prep room;

8. Anxieties of come-what-mays, erudition and wall text mastery;

9. A thousand blank walls of potentiality - the space to research, interrogate, dream;

10. Above all else, poetry.